Students at the Barnes Elementary School in Johnston sign a Rhode Island state flag which will be sent to the 1207th Transportation Company of the Rhode Island National Guard at Base Camp Adder in Iraq.

The Providence Journal / John Freidah

Zachary Guglielmo, 8, signs the flag. His uncle, 1st Lt. Thomas Manera, is with the 1207th.

The Providence Journal / John Freidah

JOHNSTON — The state flags, scrawled with signatures and messages from local schoolchildren, were hard to miss on the sprawling military base about 300 miles southwest of Baghdad.

Thomas Manera saw plenty of them after he and his East Greenwich-based troops arrived at Base Camp Adder earlier this fall. They were a nice touch.

But something bothered the lieutenant: not one of the flags was from the Ocean State.

The Rhode Island flag, emblazoned with its anchor-and-stars insignia, labeled with the state’s motto, “hope,” was nowhere to be seen.

The missing state flag was one of the things Manera mentioned after he took out his calling card just before Halloween and telephoned his sister at her home in Johnston.

Dawn Guglielmo hadn’t heard from her brother since he and other members of the Army National Guard’s 1207th Transportation Company landed in Kuwait on Sept. 21.

He told her about the flag. Could someone send some good nuts and one of those Swiffer mops?

She and her children had been waiting to hear from him. A picture of the lieutenant hangs on a pantry door in their kitchen, near a map of Iraq and a calendar. Each day, one of the children crosses off a day with a marker.

“Then, that day’s gone, and we’ve got to deal with the next day,” says Guglielmo.

Manera is a native Rhode Islander who has a wife and four children in New York.

A graduate of Rhode Island College, the 37-year-old is a high school science teacher in his hometown of Greenwich, Guglielmo says.

He is missed by his own children and by Guglielmo’s 8-year-old son, Zachary, who has fond memories of playing darts with his uncle last Christmas.

Then, there were those peculiar eggs he hid at Easter this past spring. The eggs were camouflage; each one had a dollar bill in it.

Manera doesn’t know exactly when he will come home, according to Guglielmo. But everyone hopes it will be in about a year or even sooner.

By yesterday afternoon, Zachary and all of the other elementary schoolchildren at the Barnes School were signing a state flag during their lunchtime break.

“It’s sad,” said 8-year-old Natalya Calise, a second grader who still remembers how she felt during her uncle’s stint in Iraq.

“We miss you,” she wrote in her neatest penmanship.

Brittany Ingram, 8, said her uncle remains in Iraq.

“He’s standing up and fighting for me,” she said after she wrote “Good Luck” on the flag.

The flag should be in the mail by Saturday, Guglielmo said. The nuts and the Swiffer are on the way, too.