Kids’ pens were mighty for this Iraq veteran

Donning his favorite Marine uniform -- the formal “dress blues” -- Sgt. Jerrett Peake surveyed the dozens of small faces staring up at him at Manchester Elementary School.

After a brief introduction and greeting, several small hands shot in the air with questions for the 22-year-old who left Iraq in February.

“Do you ever get homesick?” (Sometimes. But letters help with that.)

“Do you use night-vision goggles?” (Yes, and he also gets to fix them.)

“Who’s winning the war?” (We are.)

Second-grader Madison Collins finally asked the burning question:

“Did you like the letters we sent you?”

“You guys wrote the best letters,” said Peake, who was stationed at Al Asad Air Base in Iraq. “And the pictures were great.”

First-, second- and third-graders questioned the Marine to whom they had sent about 120 letters and drawings months ago. They used their short time with Peake this month to satisfy their considerable curiosity about the faraway land where he had served, as well as a host of other subjects.

“They write; they never really get to see who they’re writing to,” said Kim Clinedinst, the school’s nurse, who organized the letter campaign. She has known Peake, a close friend of her son, for years. “This makes this so much more real for them.”

And as the students fired off query after query, they discovered they had a few things in common with the Marine.

“What do you do in your spare time?” one girl asked.

“I still play video games,” Peake said, smiling. Cheers erupted at this news.

His favorite video game? Halo. And, for the even more curious: He has an Xbox 360. And a PSP.

Students also were interested in whether Peake rides horses (no), his favorite song (“The Marine Corps Hymn”) and favorite movie (“The Patriot”).

But they also posed deeper questions, some of which seemed to surprise Peake.

“What’s it feel like, being in the war?” third-grader Justin Collins asked.

“I’m really proud to be over there,” said Peake, whose duties include servicing weapons systems. “But at the same time, everybody’s a little scared. You never know what’s going to happen. Even a Marine gets scared.”

Another child wondered when Peake thought the war would end.

“Pretty soon,” he said, after pausing to consider his response. “In a couple of years.”

During a separate session with first-graders, Lakota Gladwin threw out a more challenging question.

“Why do you have to fight?” she asked.

“Because there’s very bad people out there that are trying to do bad things to good people,” Peake replied.

Although accustomed to receiving e-mail and regular mail from family, friends and even strangers, Peake said he hadn’t expected the letters, drawings and class photos that arrived from the Manchester students.

“I was really surprised,” Peake said in an interview. “It was really fun to go through and read the letters.”

He shared the notes with fellow Marines, he said. They were “such a good reminder of home and what we were serving for. Mail always means a lot when you’re in the military, but when you’re over there, you just can’t describe the feeling of getting letters from home. They lift you up.”

Clinedinst, who supplied Peake with boxes of Pop-Tarts and Maryland staples such as Old Bay seasoning in addition to the letters, said Manchester Elementary’s community-oriented spirit prompted her to ask teachers to participate.

“I knew he missed being home,” Clinedinst said.

“It gets kind of lonely and boring over there [in Iraq] when you’re not doing something.”

She and the teachers involved saw a potential learning experience for the kids too.

“They have such a curiosity about other parts of the world,” second-grade teacher Shelley Ruhlman said, adding that the students were “very excited” about Peake’s unexpected visit.

As the second- and third-grade visit drew to a close, Madison Collins ventured into a more serious vein with her second question for the Marine.

“Do you like fighting for our country?”

“I love fighting for our country,” Peake said. “There’s no better feeling in the world for me.”