A Different Kind of Ammo for a Different Kind of Mission
~Arkansans send Clothes and Shoes to the Frontline
By 1st Lt. Chris Heathscott
39th Brigade Combat Team Public Affairs Officer
CAMP COOKE, Taji, Iraq— Every day, the 39th Brigade’s Civil Military Operations section works to make a positive difference in the lives of the Iraqi people to make them successful as a new nation. Their efforts have resulted in reconstructed schools, hospitals, irrigation and sewage systems, along with recreational projects for the children, just to name a few of their contributions to the overall mission. 
Every day, Soldiers with the 39th Brigade Combat Team drive past miles of trash that consume the landscape along Highway One in Taji, Iraq. The mission for this particular day, however, would lead the CMO team directly to the heart of this landfill to visit its inhabitants, some of the poorest people in the Middle East. The team was going in prepared for anything, and heavily armed with boxes of goodwill. “We pass that site all the time during our convoys, but had never stopped there,” 2nd Lt. Ferris Keller, a 39th Brigade Military Police Officer said. “Actually, we never noticed there were people who lived there.”
Maj. Karen Ryan, a resident of Batesville, Ark., had noticed. Her team also now had the ‘ammo’ to make an impact. This ‘ammo’ was not a tool of destruction. It was clothing, shoes, vitamins, candy and many other items provided by people from the state of Arkansas. “It comes from a variety of places,” Ryan said. “Each Soldier in our section has contacts at home and they bring that to the table, and people have learned throughout the 39th that we are collecting and so they have stuff and just drop it off. It’s just a conglomeration of stuff.”
After seeing firsthand how the children of Iraq live, Capt. Jason Meharg, of Clarksville, Ark., told his family and friends what he had seen. “They started just pouring stuff in,” Meharg said. “We were able to get enough stuff that we could take out that one day and actually make an impact and not just give them a little bit here and there.” “The First Baptist Church of Clarksville has done an outstanding job,” he said. “They have sent me more than anybody else has. Between them and my parents and my parents’ church, I’ve gotten a lot of stuff.”
The team packed it in their trucks and headed for the landfill to distribute the goods to the tenants of the dump. The Iraqi’s first impression of the 39th Brigade Soldiers was not one of peace, however. “We got in there and we jump out and we’ve got weapons, we’re all wearing our Kevlar and flak vests, we’re all wearing our black shades,” Meharg said. “We don’t look like people who are going to help. We look like warriors.” “At first they were a little apprehensive,” Ryan said. “I mean here come eight humvees, barreling in and normally they’re a little frightened when they see that. But once we got out and started passing out the goods and interacting with them, then there were a lot of people that followed from stop to stop.” “I think people were terrified when they first [saw] us,” said Maj. Gordon McCoy, “But the minute we handed out that first doll, it was on. It was game on.”
McCoy, a reservist who works for the First National Bank of Eastern Arkansas in Forrest City when he’s not in uniform, said his employer donated several items as well, when he heard how poor the children were living. “After seeing some of the kids myself, you want to get involved,” McCoy said. “When I had visited with my boss, he said he wanted to send some things.” And he did. Footballs, baseballs and baseball gloves, water guns and other items the children most likely didn’t have.
“You should have seen the kids,” McCoy said. “Man, your heart goes out. I tell you, your heart goes out to those kids.” “When you see a little girl there and she’s the same age as your daughter at home…6, 7, 8 years old…and she’s being told to walk through the dump, take a mule with her and go get water and bring it back…,” Meharg said. “It just hit me hard. We’re just visiting the dump for a day, not even a day, just a couple of hours, and we’re going to come back to all these comforts we have around here. Those folks are going to stay there, and live there, and sleep there that night, and wake up the next day and spend the next day there. They are not going to leave the dump.”
While visiting with one family in front of their home, which was built with paint cans and mud, a women approached McCoy and pointed at her young child’s foot. It had been cut open by a piece of glass according to an interpreter. McCoy quickly retrieved Ryan, who worked as a Registered Nurse prior to deploying. “You can tell it was an old wound the way it was trying to heal,” she said. “So we just treated him with… a betadine solution, and left the remainder for her to treat him. I think at one time it was infected, but not anymore.”
The incident was a common occurrence, since many of the dozens of children who lived in the landfill did not have shoes. “It makes you really appreciate what you have back home,” Keller said. “It makes me wish my kids could see that to appreciate what they do have at home.” Some of Keller’s team pulled security on the site, while the others helped pass out items to the crowd that began to gather once they realized the motives of the Soldiers were non-threatening. His team was also touched by the mission. “We’ve done some stuff with the kids in downtown Baghdad, in the city,” he said. “But we never actually looked at where they lived. Actually seeing people living in mud huts with cans as part of the structure of their houses…it’s very humbling. It kind of makes you realize that everybody over here is not trying to kill you, and that there are some people over here that really need us over here to help them."
Aside from the clothes, shoes, vitamins and toys passed out, Ryan took instant pictures with a Polaroid Camera to hand to the kids as gifts. “First they don’t know what you’re putting in front of your face, if it’s a gun or….they don’t know what the machine is,” Ryan said. “But when they first figure out it’s a picture and that gets circulated around, they all want one. For some of them, it’s probably the first picture they’ve seen of themselves.”
In order to show his appreciation, one Iraqi man approached the Soldiers as they prepared to depart, held out his hand and offered a sincere “thank you” in perfect English. “Of all the meetings we’ve gone to…of all the coordinating we’ve done…doing stuff like that is a whole lot more worthwhile to me than all the meetings and coordination and planning, because your directly impacting right now,” Meharg said. “When we were driving off, kids were already taking those shirts that we gave them and were putting them on, so you know they were very excited about what little we gave them.”
The convoy returned to Camp Cooke, with all participants feeling touched in some way by what they had experienced, an event that would not have taken place without the strong support of the people of Arkansas.
