Brig. Gen. Vincent Buggs was rummaging through an old footlocker last November when he came across a newspaper clipping from 2008. A group of Stillmore, Ga., kindergartners smiled in the photograph, holding small American flags and certificates the general had sent them.

General Buggs was stationed at an Army base in Iraq at the time and had been pen pals with the children, who sent him hand-drawn cards and boxes of sweets. Time passed, and General Buggs said in a recent interview that he had not heard from them in years.

“Still, it touched my heart to see them again,” he said. “I needed to tell them how much they meant to me.”

So, in January, he wrote a letter to the editor of The Metter Advertiser, which published the photograph from over a decade ago. “There is a warrior who will never forget you,” he wrote . “The simplest gestures in life often have the greatest impacts.”