SUMNER – He needs these school children as much as they need him.

He needs their questions, their innocence, their interest – and yes, their love and admiration.

It hasn’t been easy for U.S. Army soldiers like Sgt. 1st Class Jamison Roy McAlister, who were part of the initial April 2003 assault on Baghdad, Iraq.

The 33-year-old Buckfield native never thought he’d be asked to stay on nearly a year after the initial assault and play the role of peacekeeper. In more than 10 years of service, McAlister, an Army soldier with the 101st Airborne Division, had seen combat seven times. Never had he been asked to earn the trust of a country’s people.

And never did he dream that his wife back at Ft. Campbell, Ky., would leave him while he was gone.

But he always knew he could count on his little pen pals, the second- and third-graders at his childhood school, the Hartford-Sumner Elementary School.

On Wednesday, the school children crowded around him as he sat in his khaki uniform on a couch in the classroom of Linda Andrews-Chute. When he was 6 years old, Andrews-Chute was his teacher.

He showed them items he’d brought back from Iraq. There were huge pictures of Saddam Hussein, taken from homes. Every house had to have at least one picture of Hussein on display, he said.

He showed them a mural of an idyllic Iraqi countryside, taken from Hussein’s palace. There also were banners, one of which was seized from an Iraqi tank. He held up a heart-shaped music box that came from the palace, and perhaps belonged to one of Hussein’s daughters.

McAlister spent 333 days in Iraq and will return there in 11 months. But for now, he had his arms held fast around his 4-year-old twins, Tyler and Taylor, sitting cuddled in his lap.

“What a lot of people don’t realize is that, whether you’re a family member or a friend of a friend, those letters mean so much” to soldiers in the field, McAlister said.

“If you don’t send a letter, you might lose them – and I don’t mean their life, I mean their heart,” he said.

McAlister spent about a month in Ft. Campbell before coming to Buckfield to visit his father and his little pen pals in Sumner.

“Jamison has done a fine job of keeping in touch with my students, helping these youngsters understand how privileged we are to live in the United States,” Andrews-Chute said. During his last tour in Afghanistan, he brought back beautiful stone goblets that are on display inside a large display case in the school lobby.

The display case is filled with bits and pieces of the world that have been sent to the school by McAlister and 24 other soldier pen pals in the Navy, Army, Air Force and Marines.

School Principal Kay Slusser said the pen pal project allows the children to “see the world through the eyes of our troops,” while at the same time integrating the learning skills of reading, writing and using the Internet.

The class recently published a mini-biography of McAlister, based on his answers to questions they asked him in their letters. They consider him a hometown hero.

McAlister said he’s no hero.

He’s just a person serving his country, who came home to some sadness and an uncertain future.

“The future of this nation is them,” McAlister said. “We need to teach them morals. And patriotism. Hopefully the kids will have a lot more respect for their country because of what they are learning here.”