COLUMBIA --- Almost half of National Guard soldiers need mental health treatment after they return from fighting, Pentagon studies show. That has South Carolina military officials gearing up for the springtime return of its 1,800 soldiers in Afghanistan.

"They've seen some bad things, and left untreated, that could create some problems down the road," says Lt. Col. Taube Roy, the officer in charge of a new program designed to ease the transition of the members of the 218th Brigade Combat Team from wartime wariness to hometown normality.

Last summer's deployment of the Newberry-based unit ranks as the state's largest such troop movement since World War II.

"We have to help the soldiers who had to become 'warrior-citizens' turn back into 'citizen-soldiers,' " Lt. Col. Roy explained recently to a military group organizing the soldiers' welcome home.

Dubbed "The Road Home," the Guard program invites family members, employers, government leaders, health care providers, law enforcement officials and local clergy to a series of briefings and celebrations designed to teach them how to ease the soldiers' transition -- and understand what problems might crop up..

Lt. Col. Roy, who visited units in several states to see what worked and what didn't before his unit designed the South Carolina program, remembered one state's briefing in particular.

"Those who kept a loaded gun in their vehicle were asked to stand. About three-quarters of them stood up," Lt. Col. Roy recalled.

"We'd like to think they can put it behind them, but we have to realize that for a whole year or more, a gun was their ultimate survival tool. They couldn't live without it. They had to have it with them at all times," Lt. Col. Roy said.

Lt. Col. Roy, who was deployed to Afghanistan for a year in 2004, said he understands the soldiers' perspective.

"I know where they're coming from, because I've been there," he said.