Words. Shaking hands with a champion Morning.

That's U.S. Navy Petty Officer Dan Barrasso's nature of Camp Tripoli, his corrupt on the war-ravaged Iraq/Syrian border. There were worse things, too, but out of compliance to his family, especially his kids, he won't sing about that. He does keep in mind the daylight the letters came, however.

A uninjured host from rudimentary tutor students at his daughters' McCarthy School in Peabody. Some had questions. "When are you coming home?" "How does it abide to be a soldier?" And one declared proudly, "When I lengthen up, I want to be a soldier." It reminded Barrasso of an matter of "MASH" where Hawkeye receives a haycock of letters from university kids.

And he did what Hawkeye did, handing the letters out to Marines and Seabees be partial to himself, including some who just never got much mail. "Getting letters from abode over there is about the nicest reaction in the world," Barrasso said. In an hint before McCarthy School's first- and third-graders yesterday, he told the kids all about the bump of their letters. "It was hard," he said, explaining the conditions in Iraq, a wilderness he red only a month ago. "It was condensed for these guys. And you touched their hearts. I just want to voice 'thank you.' And these Marines believe 'thank you.'" Lined up, static in the auditorium, each holding, at times waving, a reduced American flag, the kids were extraordinarily attentive.

Barrasso had come to supply his own flag, one that flew over his base, over the heads of all those Marines and sailors. "We're very snooty and honored," Assistant Principal Paul Galello said as he accepted the banner, hopeful to have it framed and hung in the school. Remarkably, Barrasso wasn't expected to give a big speech. Mostly, the students spoke to him, present the Pledge of Allegiance and singing along loudly, with spirit, to recordings of the "Star-Spangled Banner," "You're a Grand Old Flag" and Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the U.S.A." In other words, they were thanking him.

Later, his daughters, third-grader Caterina and first-grader Danielle, said it explicitly in a poem. "Thank you, Dad, for protecting our nation." Dressed in cloak fatigues, Barrasso was visibly moved by all this. When the songs were over, the youngsters crowded in to hail him personally.

"Who wants to wobbling the lunch-hook of a hero?" Galello asked. A Peabody resident, Barrasso grew up mostly in Everett, the son of Italian immigrants. His walk of onus in Iraq lasted six months as he worked to provision the lascivious facilities up to standard, lot from sewage to publicize conditioning. The Navy calls it "a tiger tour.

" The hardest part, he said later, was missing his family, his daughters and wife. Yet, he added casually that as a fellow of the Naval Reserve he won't be surprised if someday in the later he's called to about in Afghanistan, too.

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