RUMFORD – Nine-year-old Junior Girl Scout Leah Perry of Mexico was looking forward to Christmas on Thursday afternoon. Not for herself, but for 184 men away from their families, serving with Alpha Company, 1-121st FA BN “Axemen,” an Army National Guard field artillery unit stationed in Baghdad.

It comprises 80 soldiers from Maine, 96 from Nevada, and eight from Arizona, who left in August for Iraq.

Perry and eight other River Valley-area Scouts from Troop 1520 adopted the troop for a year in September to work toward earning the Bronze Award badge, the Girl Scouts highest honor, she said.

“Every Girl Scout has to work 15 hours to get the bronze,” Perry said.

But that’s not so much why she’s helped gather items and fill more than 180 boxes to send to the men for Christmas.

“I like doing it, because it will help the soldiers, because they’re fighting. It will help them, because they probably don’t have much stuff up there. I think it will just make them really happy, and I think they might have a good Christmas because of the stuff we sent,” Perry said.

She didn’t know where Iraq is, but has a personal connection to the war. Her uncle, Army intelligence Col. Keith Geiger of Fort Hood, Texas, is serving his second or third tour there, Perry’s mom, Diane Perry said Thursday.

Diane Perry is vice president of Franklin Savings Bank’s Mexico and Rumford branches. She helped the girls and their troop leaders set up a crude assembly line Thursday in the Rumford branch’s lower floor to fill and package 30 remaining boxes.

On Saturday, the girls helped fill and package 153 boxes. In addition to Leah Perry, the others are, 9-year-olds Taylor Smart of Roxbury, and Brooke Young of Mexico; 10-year-olds Kristin Arsenault of Mexico, Abbey Pinkham of Rumford, Stephanie Cushman of Mexico, Kelsie Blanchard of Rumford, and Ellie Hall of Weld; and 11-year-old Shannon Laubauskas of Mexico.

“These girls worked so hard,” troop leader Michele Cushman of Mexico said Thursday afternoon, while hand writing the names of soldiers on each box’s mailing label.

“It just gives me the chills to support 184 soldiers, and give them a Christmas. A lot of them probably wouldn’t have had one at all,” she added.

The Scouts’ goal on the service project is to write letters to the soldiers in what they’ve dubbed a “Troop to Troop” effort, while sending food, writing and clothing items, and toiletries, movies, toys and games.

In each Christmas box the Scouts included a letter asking the soldiers to write to them and visit them when the men return home.

Earlier this year, the girls appealed to Western Maine, seeking donated goods.

“The community was amazing,” troop leader Tracy Pinkham of Rumford said Thursday.

“They just really embraced this. So many people gave donations from South Paris, Rumford, Mexico, Andover, Dixfield, Peru and more,” she said.

Some of the men had already written e-mails to the troop and sent photographs showing the girls’ letters attached to a bulletin board.

The unit’s commander, Capt. Kent A. Cousins, even wrote about the girls in his October report from Kuwait, which can be viewed on the Internet.

Last week, the Girl Scouts received a video from the men that showed them leaving their families.

“It was really touching. It brought it real for the girls that these are real people over there fighting for us,” she added.