After coming home from Iraq, Sergeant Gunnar Swanson was so haunted by what he had seen that he went on a mission to help Iraqi children escape the violence in their country.
When Sergeant Gunnar Swanson began serving in Iraq in 2003, he and his fellow troops spent a lot of time with Iraqi children, learning their language, giving them toys and snacks, and playing games with them. But the situation in Iraq soon took a turn for the worse, and several months later, Swanson found himself in a situation he’d never imagined: pointing an M-16 rifle at a young Iraqi boy who he believed to be an insurgent.
Fortunately, he didn’t have to shoot. But the incident has haunted him ever since. “Pointing a gun at a child, threatening to shoot him,” Swanson told the Christian Science Monitor. “I was 25 years old at the time, and it has weighed pretty heavy on me ever since then.”
After Swanson’s tour of duty was complete, he returned to the United States, and eventually got a job in Florida as a dolphin trainer at a marine mammal education center. While Swanson loved splashing around in the water with his dolphin friends, he couldn’t get the Iraqi children out of his mind—and before long, he decided it was time to make a move to help them escape the violence of their country.
“I was living a great life in Key Largo, but I knew that training dolphins wasn’t my mission in life,” Swanson said. “My mission is to help these kids over in Iraq.”
After learning about a program manager job at a non-profit called War Kids Relief, Swanson left sunny Florida for the brutal winters of Minnesota, where the program was based. There, he would work to help children and teens in war-torn countries like Iraq and Afghanistan to escape from the violence of their surroundings and take part in educational and vocational opportunities.
To help the organization raise money for their projects, Swanson decided to undertake an ambitious mission: he would walk more than 1,000 miles from Dallas to Minnesota, on a journey known as A Soldier’s March for Peace. He began the walk on the 4th of July, and completed his travels on September 10th. Along the way, he visited many schools and youth groups, where he spoke with children about the problems in Iraq and Afghanistan, and helped them write letters to Iraqi and Afghan children.
“Kids want to help their peers in these war-torn countries,” Swanson wrote in his blog. “It’s inspirational to watch their eyes light up with the possibility that their letters and fundraising projects may actually help a child just like them who is living in a much more difficult situation.”
By the time Swanson completed his epic walk, his feet were covered with blisters. But he believed whatever difficulties he had faced throughout his journey were well worth it. After all, the walk wasn’t about him—it was about something much larger.
“I do this to protect kids in Iraq, Afghanistan, and here at home,” Swanson wrote. “I do this for my friends who didn’t make it home with me from Iraq. I do it for my nephews and my future children. I do it for every kid I see playing on a playground, riding bike down the street, or playing ball in the park.”