Many of Iraq's adults may long ago have grown tired of seeing American troops on their streets, but soldiers in the area of Najaf, about 80 miles south of Baghdad, say the country's children are different.

"Amerikee," the children yell, again and again, whenever they see passing GIs.

Soldiers in Iraq know all too well they are in for the long haul. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said last week that it could take up to 12 years to destroy the insurgency. President Bush followed Tuesday with a pledge to "stay in the fight until the fight is done." If those assertions are correct, winning the hearts and minds of Iraq's children may be one of the most important missions of all.

"They seem to love the Americans and we need to work with that," said Jolleen Larson, whose husband is a member of the 115th Maintenance Company of the Utah National Guard. "We want them to have more experiences of seeing Americans really trying to help them."

To that end, Larson and other Utah Guard family members have begun to collect supplies for two Najaf-area schools adopted by American soldiers, including many from the 115th.

The schools are small and simple. Built by the British in the 1930s, one was crumbling when the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit came upon it last year. The unit built a new building and furnished it with new desks and blackboards. In their off hours, soldiers like Rusty Larson are now building school furniture - desks for teachers, bookcases and other items specifically requested by the headmaster.

"The children we see along the roads are desperately poor by American standards and how they live is beyond our imaginations," said Lt. Col. Samuel Giese, an Army chaplain from Maryland who is heading the project. "The school support project is a way of directing in a substantive way the desire the troops have to do something for the children."

Already, the basement of Bonnie Jensen's Taylorsville home is filling up. The mother-in-law of Staff Sgt. Cecil Hawthorne volunteered the space for storage of the chalk, pencils, notebooks and other supplies destined for the Najaf-area schools.

Jensen's daughter, Jenny Hawthorne, hopes to postmark the supplies by July 20.

"It takes about a month to ship the stuff there and the kids start school on Aug. 20," she said.

As the mother of three young children, Hawthorne said she wanted to do something that would help people just like her family.

She's not alone.

Giese said every chaplain in his battalion has been charged with finding a school to support. Iraqischools.com, a Minnesota-based nonprofit group founded in late 2003, has estimated that its volunteers shipped more than a million pounds of school supplies to Iraq by last month.

Army officials in Baghdad said it would be difficult to count the number of projects undertaken by their units with the goal of directly impacting children.

"I couldn't even begin to say how many," said Maj. Flora Lee. "There are a lot of projects going on, all the time. It warms you up when you can help."

And hopefully, she said, it warms the children as well.

After all, she said, they are the ones who will ultimately be in charge.

"They'll take over," she said. "And hopefully they are willing to build their country even better and even stronger."

mlaplante@sltrib.com