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In 2004 a young man stationed in Tikrit found my 10 websites while stuck at a desk with nothing to do for hours. Over a couple of weeks he read all 450 of my articles and then sent me a very long fan email. I responded, and we ended up emailing regularly over the year he was there.
Soon after that first email exchange, I started staying up into the ugly morning hours to IM with him, since he spent his mornings stuck at that desk, before going out on other kinds of jobs. With the time differential, that meant I had to stay up past midnight to IM with him.
I sent him books, too. He really loved those packages.
He is back in San Diego now, and going to college, but we still keep in touch.
My nephew was in Mosul at that same time. (He is back in Baghdad now--his second Iraq tour.) Although my nephew and I are not really close, I made sure he got a snail-mail letter every week, and I also emailed him long, letter-length emails at least three times a week. He was very grateful for those contacts. He doesn’t need as many letters from me now, though, because he has a wife and an almost 1-year-old baby, so his mail is filled with letters and pictures from people he really is close to. Back then, though, all he had writing to him was his parents, siblings, grandparents, and me.
While he was there the first time, though, his high school English teacher had her class write a bunch of letters to him. He said he kept those letters and read and reread them the whole time he was there, even though they were from people he didn't even know!
When they are not sweating bullets while out on patrol, these soldiers are often bored and lonely for a touch from home. Mail-call breaks up the day and gives them something to look forward to. Isn’t it true that even those of us here at home look forward to when the mail arrives? And that we are disappointed when nothing interesting comes in the mail? Imagine that feeling multiplied by about a zillion for those stuck in the middle of a war zone far from home.
When a friend of mine was in the first war in Iraq, I used to write to him every week (no email back then). He told me that it was a huge thrill to come in from guard duty and find a letter on his bed waiting for him. Mail service was a bit iffy during that war, so the letters would come in erratically. Sometimes as letter sent out later would arrive before one sent out earlier. Sometimes none would arrive for a couple of weeks, but then several would arrive at once.
About a year after he got back from Iraq, he called to tell me that another of my letters had just arrived! He was back here, but the letter had been forwarded all over the place for a year before it found its way to him. He got a big kick out of the fact that my letters were still arriving.
Even cards help. When Ann Landers used to encourage people to send Valentine's day cards to soldiers in Vet hospitals, they would write back to her and tell her how grateful they were to receive an outpouring of cards, especially the homemade ones from kids.
I can’t stress this enough. Care packages are fantastic, and we all need to send what we can when we can. But even something as simple as a card can brighten the day for someone who has little to look forward to each day.
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