KABUL, Afghanistan– U.S. Army Sgt. Derrick Wygle, mortarman, fellow soldiers from Company A, 1st Battalion, 133rd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat, 34th Infantry Division, other and Afghan National Army soldiers from 1st Company, 1st Battalion, 201st Regiment, conducted a dismounted patrol to the Najil village Jan. 3 and delivered a batch of school supplies to the school.
Toward the end of November, Wygle was talking with his wife Ona, who asked him what he wanted for Christmas. In a way she was asking on behalf of her husband’s stateside employer, the Waverly Health Center, where he works as an emergency room unit coordinator. They were making it a project to send him a good present.
“I’m not much of a Christmas guy; to me it’s more about family than gifts and there’s not much I could use here,” Wygle said. “So I said, ‘well, have them send me a box or two of school supplies.”
What Wygle got was nearly 100 boxes of school supplies from the town of Waverly, Iowa, and its surrounding communities.
The supplies were for children at the local school, Quala e’ Najil. It is one of the closest schools to the tiny Combat Outpost Najil where Wygle and his fellow soldiers from Co. A are serving in eastern Afghanistan.
Wygle, a seven-year veteran of the Iowa National Guard, said his co-workers at the Waverly Health Center approached the local newspaper and asked for donations. His story is on the front page, with a photo his wife, a photographer, took of him.
“I don’t deserve to be on the front page of the paper,” said Wygle. “My employer does. I just asked for a couple boxes of school supplies.”
At the school, the soldiers took time to interact with the children and toured the school with the principal. About 2,000 boys attend the school in the morning, with another 950 girls attending in the afternoon. The ANA were noticeably happy to line up the children and hand them the supplies.
Wygle said little things make a huge difference to the children, who are very poor. In fact, a good toy for a child in the village is a wire with two wire wheels on it, which they push through the streets.
“We are trying to make sure the kids who don’t have things get them,” he said.
The Iowa support rendered boxes full of pens, pencils, snacks, pads and book bags.
Quala e’ Najil school principal Haminullah said he is thankful for the donations from the U. S. because the children are from a country that is poor and war-torn.
“Education is the foundation of a strong country,” he said. “The supplies will help the students get a better education, which will benefit the larger picture.”
“The majority of the supplies came from Bremer County, U.S. Army Maj. Steven Shannon, civil affairs team chief, Laghman Provincial Reconstruction Team. “Supplies were also donated from a project known as Operation Care.”
Wygle said the response was amazing, but it didn’t completely surprise him.
“It’s kind of an Iowa thing,” he said. “It’s not just my community; it’s all of our communities. They support every single one of our soldiers here. My employer has always supported me through drills, flood duty, schools, deployments and now this. They really, really stepped up.”