HERE'S TO MORE WEARING OF THE BLUE.

The young soldiers recuperating at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany will probably never know her name, and that's a shame.

These GIs wounded in action in Iraq and Afghanistan might want to drop her a note when they get home, thanking her for helping raise their morale.

In the next few weeks they'll be getting new bluejeans from the military hospital's chaplain and can walk around in civilian clothes instead of drafty hospital garb during their rehabilitation - all courtesy of Carrie Gaston and her friends in the San Fernando Valley Quiltmakers Guild.

These are the same kind of bluejeans the women have given the hundreds of schoolchildren identified by their teachers as living below the poverty line. The same kind they've donated by the hundreds this past year to homeless shelters, churches, nonprofit organizations, and anywhere else people look at new bluejeans as a luxury.

``There are hundreds of needy kids walking around in new jeans today because of this woman,'' said Suzanne Kahane, who runs Operation School Bell, a nonprofit group administered through the Assistance League of Southern California.

The irony is these bluejeans were headed for the dump until Carrie turned them from landfill to goodwill.

I wrote last year that she and her friends were washing and mending thousands of pairs of donated jeans that would have been thrown away by a local importer because of minor defects.

Instead, Carrie sat at her sewing machine and stood over her clothes washer for four straight days, altering and cleaning 500 pairs of new jeans to give kids who had never worn anything but hand-me-downs.

The story touched a nerve locally. But not even Carrie and her friends imagined their efforts could one day reach overseas to touch hundreds of hospitalized servicemen and servicewomen starting on their rehabilitation.

A pair of new bluejeans might not sound like much, but when you've been lying on a military hospital bed for weeks or months, dreaming of getting better and going home, to slip on a pair of jeans instead of military fatigues or a drafty hospital gown is a big deal.

``The military provides them with military clothing, and the hospital with hospital clothing, but nobody was providing them with civilian clothing,'' says Jim Kokas, co-chairman of the military assistance program at March Air Force Base, where the jeans will be flown to Germany in a few weeks.

The only place the troops could go for civilian clothing was the chaplain's office, which collected donations of clothing and goods from service groups, like the VFW, and military families.

``Our members in the quilting guild in San Bernardino read a story in the local paper there about how the Chaplain's Closet program was running low on civilian clothing because so many wounded soldiers were at the hospital,'' Carrie said.

She got in touch with Kokas at March Air Force Base and told him she had 500 pairs of new jeans for the Chaplain's Closet at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.

Through the VFW, Kokas made arrangements for the donated clothing to be flown to Germany.

``It's amazing and gratifying to see how many wonderful people, like Carrie and her quilting guild, have opened their arms to our soldiers,'' Kokas said.

``I'm a Vietnam vet. I can remember when it wasn't this way.''

And now Carrie is asking us to open our arms a little wider.

She could use more volunteers to help wash and mend still more of the jeans donated by Indigo Sportswear Inc. in Los Angeles.

Also, the $1,000 donation her group received - to rent space in a Northridge storage facility for storing the thousands of jeans until they can be mended and handed out - is almost gone.

If you can help, give Carrie a call at [phone].

Dennis McCarthy, [phone]

dennis.mccarthy(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

Carrie Gaston of the Valley Quiltmakers Guild shows one of hundreds of new denim pants whose minor defects were fixed. Soon 500 pairs of bluejeans will go to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.

Evan Yee/Staff Photographer