Responding to requests from the U.S. military in Iraq, scores of Western Pennsylvania civilians are trying to ease the plight of children in that war-torn country.
The goal is threefold: To help soldiers win the hearts and minds of young Iraqis, to communicate American goodwill and to provide Iraqi children with items that are in desperately short supply.
"Kids are the collateral damage of any war. We must help," said Dave Black, of Bushy Run American Legion Post 260 in Claridge, one of the groups involved.
Black, who spent a total of 13 months in Iraq as a civilian employee of the Army Corps of Engineers, said it will take a generation before the full impact of Post 260's gift-giving can be measured. To cynics who might disparage the project, Black asked, "Can it hurt?"
Bob DeMarcki, a member of American Legion Post 820 in Monroeville, said the children of Iraq "don't know what the war is all about. Everything normal in their world is gone. There is a great need for normalcy in children's lives. Our soldiers see this."
The Post 260 project provides Iraqi children with toys. Post 820 is sending school supplies. In most instances, the items will be distributed by U.S. troops
Black, of Jeannette, made three trips to Iraq's second-largest city, Basra, starting in December 2003. There, he made friends with Edmay Mayers, a Corps of Engineers program analyst who pioneered the effort to put toys in the hands of young Iraqis.
In the initial stages of the fighting, children swarmed around American vehicles for handouts, Black said. As the security situation worsened and civilian traffic deaths rose, military commanders ordered a halt to the practice of soldiers throwing soccer balls and other items out the doors and windows of their vehicles.
Mayers' singular contribution was to organize the gift-giving and to recruit civilian donors, Black said.
Candy Jones, the president of the ladies' auxiliary to Post 260, said six boxes have been filled with toys, including dozens of stuffed animals and dolls. The "hundreds" of toys collected so far have been mailed directly to Mayers.
Mayers uses a variety of methods to distribute the gifts, Black said, but mostly she sends the items out with teams of coalition soldiers. "I think she recently used Australians," Black said.
At first, the toys came exclusively from members of the American Legion post. Both Jones and Black said word of the program is spreading, and they are getting more and more donations from outside sources.
The regular and colored pencils, rulers and reams of paper collected by Post 820 and a host of volunteers, including Monroeville and Murrysville school children, will be mailed to the Army's 758th Maintenance Company out of Warren, Ohio. The 758th is currently stationed in An Nasiriyah, Iraq, 200 miles southeast of Baghdad.
DeMarcki, of Harrison City, noted the program carries an official U.S. Army designation: Operation 758-820 School Children, and entails some risk to the soldiers of the 758th, who are expected to mount patrols to get the bags of school supplies to the children.
"We know similar (efforts) have saved American lives in Iraq," said DeMarcki, explaining some of the rationale for the military unit's involvement.
DeMarcki said a small minority of people have approached him and voiced opposition to the project. One critic argued the Iraqis would turn the pencils into weapons to poke at the eyes of U.S. soldiers.
"Some folks like to stereotype people," DeMarcki said, turning aside the criticism.
Michele Clarke, Murrysville's director of parks and recreation, who helped to spearhead the program in the municipality, said "evidently the U.S. Army thinks (the project) is important," and urged greater civilian involvement in relieving the hardships of the Iraqi people.
"To me, Iraq is an extension of our own country," Clarke said.
James Carafano, a retired Army officer and a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, supports the projects, saying there is some evidence that the kindnesses extended to the German and Japanese peoples by ordinary GIs after World War II eased those two countries down the path to democracy.
"It's not going to stop an Iraqi car bomber," Carafano said. "It's not a silver bullet, it's not a panacea, but it's not naive. It's what Americans do and have always done."
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