An Iraqi boy leaps over garbage and sewage in the street as he sprints to see if he can get a handout from Fort Lewis, Wash., Stryker soldiers on patrol in Mosul, Iraq, on Wednesday.
Photo: Tony Overman/The Olympian

FOB Marez, Mosul – Little Iraqi kids always get excited when they see U.S. military vehicles going by.

Down in the desert south of Mosul, I saw kids literally sprinting out of their mud brick homes when a convoy of Humvees passed. The kids were waving like mad at the vehicles.

Soldiers weren’t sure whether the children were genuinely happy to see them or were hoping for a handout.

Iraqi boys leap for a bottle of water thrown from the back of a Stryker vehicle while on patrol in Mosul, Iraq, on Wednesday. Photo: Tony Overman/The Olympian

The bottom line, they said, is it’s a lot better to have them waving than not.

Things are a little different here in urban Mosul. Children often wave and sometimes seem really happy just to get a wave back.

But probably half the time you can definitely tell they expect something. They will hold up their hands in the shape of a soccer ball or point to their mouths because they want a candy bar. Soldiers sometimes toss the kids bottles of water or whatever they have handy on the Stryker vehicle. It's hard not to feel bad for kids growing up here.

But some crowds of kids can be maddeningly relentless in demanding that you hand over your watch or sunglasses. Boys often tend to insist on being given a “football” when it should be pretty obvious you are not carrying one.

There are a minority of times, in certain neighborhoods, where the children will be hostile.

One Fort Lewis soldier had a kid hit him in the helmet with a rock this morning. Tony saw another boy, maybe five or six years old, chuck a rock at a Stryker vehicle today.

The Stryker stopped at a local school to ask why the children were so hostile in that neighborhood. It turned out to be a girls’ school. The teachers said the girls were afraid of the soldiers, but they weren’t hostile.

-- Sean Cockerham