a connecticut unit, keeping the peace

a rather nice story out of afghanistan. hurry home 102nd! we miss you and WE THANK YOU for your service.
(and thanks to the students of ms troy's and other classes at mathewson elementary school for the clothing drive!!! wicked cool)

Trained To Kill, Instead They Give For State Troops Returning From Afghanistan, Helping Children Made All The Difference

By JESSE HAMILTON, Courant Staff Writer
When U.S. soldiers settle into a strange land, such as the rocky borderlands of Afghanistan's eastern side, you can bet their best friendships will be with the smallest of the locals: the children.In Iraq and Afghanistan, the outposts and bases become suns in the orbits of area children, hoping for handouts and excitement and maybe an education about the armored strangers living in their neighborhoods

Some troops from Connecticut who have been in Iraq have learned a special wariness of children, who have sometimes been deadly, grenade-carrying pawns of the insurgency. But for a few Connecticut soldiers now in the Jalalabad area of Afghanistan, the bond with Afghan children is what they will take away from their year at war..........

............"You're trained to be aggressive, to fight, to kill. The hardest thing coming here is they're trying to win over the hearts and minds of the people of Afghanistan, so you have to take your aggression down a couple of notches," Troy said by phone from Afghanistan. His group has only been in a single long firefight, he said, and none of the soldiers was hurt."We came over here expecting to fight a war when what we're actually doing is trying to keep the peace.".........