FARMINGTON – When Staff Sgts. Trisha and John Anderson’s unit was sent to Balad, Iraq, last fall, they tried to make the best of it.

But still, the days would come – especially around Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s – when loneliness and depression set in.

It was then they’d bring out the letters from Hartford’s first-grade class.

Written in the sweet scrawl characteristic of kids that age, the letters told about the weather in Maine, their holiday plans, and other aspects of normal life back home. They also contained floods of questions about life in Iraq. Did it rain? Did it snow? Were there animals? Did Iraqi kids play soccer? Go to school?

“They were absolutely amazing,” Trish Anderson said Monday. “When you hit a low part, it just brings a smile to your face to have innocent children wish you well. We used to sit around on some of our downtime and just pass the letters around,” she said.

The fact the kids were so young meant some couldn’t write well, but drew pictures instead. Hartford translated for those who couldn’t spell real well, Anderson said. The fact they were young also meant they didn’t care about the politics of war, yet. The concern conveyed in their letters was pure – free of all that.

“It was just absolutely wonderful to hear from perfect strangers that didn’t have to care about us, and they did. It was the neatest thing,” Trish Anderson said.

“Rhonda Hartford is a first-grade teacher and happens to be my closest and dearest friend,” Anderson’s sister Pam Henderson said Monday. “So (last year) as I’m crying because my little sister is gone off to Iraq, she decides it’d be a nice learning lesson for her class, and they started writing letters.”

“My sister sat around her bunker, passing (them) around,” she said. Anderson would call, or write, telling her about the reaction. “I’ve got big soldiers here sitting here crying, reading all the letters from these first grade kids,” Henderson said, quoting Anderson.

Henderson thanked Rhonda Hartford’s class in front of the whole school Monday by presenting them with a flag that had been flown on a mission over Iraq. The letter writing – and the response the kids got from their efforts – means a lot to the Mallett School, Principal Tracy Douglass said after the presentation. “It’s a good opportunity for our students to be thinking about how we care for others beyond … school, our community, our state and our country,” she said.

“We should all be supporting our troops,” Hartford said following the presentation of the flag. “This was just a little part we could do in first grade.”

Henderson hopes the school will take on a similar project this year. “My brother-in-law is stationed in the Anbar province,” she said. “His name is Don Iskerka – he’s called Tank. He’s a master sergeant in the Marines.”

Anbar is one of the areas with the hottest fighting right now, she said. It’s very rural, Marines there have no access to the usual on-base comforts like fresh cooked meals. All they have to eat are MREs (Meals Ready to Eat),” she said. “I’d like to challenge them to adopt his battalion,” she said.