A teacher and third-graders at Camp Humphreys American Elementary School in Pyongtaek, South Korea, make Valentine’s Day cards for eventual distribution to South Korea-based U.S. troops now deployed in Iraq. The card-making project was carried on by Department of Defense Dependents Schools all over South Korea. (Courtesy of Camp Humphreys American Elementary School)
A teacher and third-graders at Camp Humphreys American Elementary School in Pyongtaek, South Korea, make Valentine’s Day cards for eventual distribution to South Korea-based U.S. troops now deployed in Iraq. The card-making project was carried on by Department of Defense Dependents Schools all over South Korea. (Courtesy of Camp Humphreys American Elementary School)
Third graders at Camp Humphreys American Elementary School salute while holding up the Valentine's Day cards they've made for Korea-based U.S. troops currently deployed in Iraq. (Courtesy of Camp Humphreys American Elementary School)
PYONGTAEK, South Korea — Students at Defense Department schools in South Korea are making Valentine’s Day cards to be distributed to U.S. troops in Iraq who deployed there last year from South Korea.
“Dear American Soldier, I hope you feel good and get to see your family soon. Have a Happy Valentine’s Day and a good year,” 9-year-old Ashley Gerlach wrote on the card she made this week at Camp Humphreys American Elementary School in Pyongtaek.
“All of the schools in Korea are engaged in preparing the valentine cards for the troops in Iraq,” Dennis Rozzi, DODDS-Korea assistant district superintendent, said Tuesday.
The cards were to be turned in to the Korea district office in Seoul by Friday, he said, and sent to the troops from there.
Troops who deployed to Iraq from South Korea currently include the 2nd Infantry Division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team, which sent some 3,600 troops in August for a one-year Iraq tour; and about 30 helicopter repair troops from the Army’s Company G, 194th Maintenance Battalion, 52nd Aviation Regiment at Camp Long, who left in the fall for a one-year tour.
As of Friday, 35 troops of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team had died as a result of their Iraq service.
At the elementary school on Camp Humphreys, fourth-grade teacher Kristi Brecheisen had a talk with her class before they began the cards.
She said she told them “just that they’re our soldiers from Korea that are over there fighting for us and they’re not going to be able to be home with their own families on Valentine’s Day, and it would be a really nice thing if we could make the valentines for them and maybe make them feel closer to home, maybe just put a smile on their faces for Valentine’s Day.”
Her students — almost all from active-duty military families — responded eagerly to the opportunity to support the troops in Iraq, Brecheisen said.
“They seem to know exactly what’s going on,” she said. “A lot of their parents have already been over there and come back, so it kind of hit close to home for them. ... They were really excited to do it and they wanted to know exactly where their valentine was going. They wanted to write that person a message. They didn’t want to just write a random message. They wanted to be more personalized. ... Of course we couldn’t do that. But they really like to do stuff for the soldiers, whether it be in Korea or Iraq.”
Brecheisen told her students to choose whatever message they wanted to express on their cards.
“All I wrote was ‘You come home safe and have a Happy Valentine’s Day,’” said third-grader Jacob Almquist, 9. “’Cause I saw all the soldiers back in Iraq, since they didn’t have the comfort of their family, I thought they’d like to have something that would make them feel more warm inside.”
The children made the cards themselves, using construction paper, scissors, glue, crayons, markers, colored pencils and, in some cases, computer software that let them use various graphics and other features.
“I folded a piece of paper in half, and I cut it out into a heart shape,” said Ashley Gerlach, who’s in Brecheisen’s class. “And then I stuck a big picture of Cupid on there and I wrote Happy Valentine’s Day and then inside I put my message in.
“I think they’re going to feel happy because they might not have gotten a card, because their families are far away and they couldn’t see them,” she said.
Ashley said she hopes the soldier who gets her card “will put it away up in his desk or drawer, and he’ll display it for other soldiers to see. I hope he’ll think that people are thinking of him and that he feels a little bit more at home.”
