It had to be the girl with the darkest eyes, the braces cutting into her lips from anticipation, wearing a T-shirt she bought with saved up allowance money that read "My Dad Rocks" in sparkly blue letters across her thin body.

Heather Kimbrell, 11 years old, with her older brother and two younger brothers at her side, her mother crying nearby, saw all these soldiers, and all that mattered was her daddy. Spc. Brad Kimbrell, shrapnel that tore his arm in Afghanistan, shoulders broad, face hard and lean and strong. He stood with 36 other men, soldiers, in formation facing away from the families that had been without them for 13 months. Their chins jutted out, granite. Officers droned on a stage over a microphone. The Rock Hill armory, where these National Guard soldiers from the 178th Combat Engineers are based, where they finally had come back to, was draped with banners. The voices of the brass seemed to never end.

Little Heather stayed ready. Finally, the men were released to their families, and Heather ran to her daddy.

Brad Kimbrell from Rock Hill forgot for a moment he earned that Purple Heart in another country across the world. He grabbed armfuls of this little girl, and she grabbed him back with one of those hugs that leaves a mark from tiny fingers dug deep in a father's neck.

"Daddy!" she called out, then the echoes of other kids saying the same thing seemed to echo, thunder, through the armory.

Finally, all these daddies, sons, brothers and husbands were home. The two barely 20-something Moss boys from Chester, brothers, one with wounds who saved so many other men one awful day in Afghanistan, came home. The two Swan boys from Lancaster, brothers, were home. The oldest is 23, the younger 21. These two sets of brothers, and all these guys, were asked to save a country called Afghanistan.

And they did.

About 175 soldiers from the 178th Combat Engineers, part of more than 1,500 soldiers in the 218th Brigade, taught the Afghan police how to win over the public. A few of the 178th men are already home. More are expected Saturday. Then next week, the rest.

In the front row of all these families Thursday packed into that hot armory to see these men who braved desert and icy cold stood a lady from Fort Mill named Linda Williams. She was there hours early.

"The best Mother's Day present in the world," she said.

As the buses carrying these men pulled in, her husband, Milton Williams Sr., stood holding an enormous American flag. Milton Williams Sr. stood so tall, so proud, he seemed to tower over the crowd. He said nothing. But his eyes shouted, "Son!"

That son is Milton Williams Jr., 26 years old. His job with the guard more than a year ago, before deployment, was cook. In the past year, this young man was infantry, combat, patrols, convoy security and toiling on surveillance and reconnaissance that so many times bring dispatches back to America that make mothers and fathers cringe because somebody's son is wounded or dead.

When Milton Williams Sr. and Linda Williams had a chance to grab that son, it looked like they were new parents again in the delivery room. They squeezed so hard and they loved so much because their son was back and alive.

"The hardest, longest year of my life," said the senior Williams.

The junior Williams, broad in the shoulder and thin at the waist, a soldier straight off the recruiting poster and nobody's cook anymore, he is America.

Nearby, three little girls raced for a burly, short staff sergeant with a nametag that read "Harris." A guy who 13 months ago was a diesel mechanic, then for a year spent every hour of every day working, planning, fighting, to bring somebody else's kid home alive to their mother or father.

Scott Harris, 36 years old, led so many men in Afghanistan. Some were young enough to be his sons.

"Every one of them came home," Harris said.

And now, he had his three girls in his arms. Amber, 11. Marena, 9. And Hayle, the baby, 4. Wife Gena, who had to be a single parent for so long, had her husband back.

Harris looked at his three girls and his wife and said, "This is what I missed the most. My family. The look in their eyes. Their faces, how they are shaped. How they smile at me."

He said this as Hayle held her father's hand with tiny red-painted fingernails that dug into his skin. He smiled, savored the digging into his hard, scraped hands, and did not flinch.