U.S. troops donate 800 pairs of shoes to kids in rural Iraq

By Kevin Dougherty, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Thursday, May 12, 2005

GAWRA BAREY, Iraq — It is rare for kids to run back to school after their teacher has dismissed them for the day. Kids being kids, they usually want to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the classroom.

Leave it to a squad of soldiers to draw them back in. And for shoes, no less.

But this is Iraq, rural Iraq, where a pair of brand-new shoes is not easy to come by. Gawra Barey is well off the beaten path, given that it’s a mile from the Iraq-Iran border and days away on foot from the nearest shoe shop.

“I went through villages when I first got here and noticed that some of the kids didn’t have shoes,” said Sgt. William Bailey, 29, of Logan Utah.

“Some of them had holes in their shoes and others cut out the backs so their feet could hang over and still have something solid to stand on.”

So Bailey made a formal request to tap into a special fund set aside by his battalion commander for low-cost (less than $1,000) humanitarian projects. The idea got approved, and now his team and three others are in the process of distributing 800 pairs of shoes to kids in remote pockets of northeastern Iraq.

Bailey’s unit — Battery B, 1st Battalion, 148th Field Artillery — has the job of aiding the Iraqi border police. That often takes the National Guard troops into some extremely remote places, such as Gawra Barey, a mountain hamlet of 100 or so people.

Many of the residents had never even seen an American until Bailey and 14 other soldiers rolled up in front of their school Monday and announced they had shoes for the taking.

By the time the soldiers carried boxes of shoes into a classroom, there were more than a dozen kids swarming about. School principal Galawezh Ja’far Qader watched the excitement.

Shoes are “a very useful thing,” Qader said through an interpreter. “They get torn easily because of the mountains.”

A case in point is 11-year-old Bahroz Raheem Qader, who sported a pair of battered white sneakers that spent “not even a month” under his feet. He opted for a black pair that stayed in the box it came in, at least for the day.

The children and a few parents sorted through scores of boxes. There were shoes of the pink and blue variety, and even ones that blinked red and green with each step.

Dashnei Ali Mohammed, 13, also selected a black pair, but then switched to orange. It was hard to tell if she was happier about her new footwear or having the chance to mingle with Americans for the first time.

“I never thought they would be this kind,” she said through an interpreter.

Bailey and his cadre of shoe elves gave out 16 pairs. They then packed up and moved on to their next stop. By week’s end, Bailey expects all 200 pairs of shoes in his team’s possession to be distributed.

“This is what I like doing, getting out and helping people,” said Spc. Douglas White, who dropped in for the initial visit. “This is what makes the [deployment to Iraq] all worth it.”