Holidays bring avalanche of mail for troops

Holidays bring avalanche of mail for troops
By Jamie Gumbrecht | McClatchy Newspapers

* Posted on Wednesday, December 19, 2007


CAMP TAJI, Iraq — It's Christmastime at Camp Taji, and Army Staff Sgt. Jared DeAtley looks traumatized, but not by the war outside the camp or holidays away from home. It's only 9 a.m., and the mail warehouse already has called.

" 'Come get the mail,' " said DeAtley, who's from Fleming County, Ky., shaking his head.

Those calls have been coming earlier and more emphatically lately. The daily mail pickup by Battery B, 2nd Battalion, 138th Field Artillery, a National Guard unit from Carlisle, Ky., easily fills the bed of a Chevy Silverado, sometimes twice.

With the holidays approaching, the volume of mail headed to service members in Iraq has skyrocketed. In one 24-hour period last week, 788,473 pounds of mail came into Iraq, according to the U.S. military's Postal Operations Division in Kuwait. Compare that with a 24-hour period in July, when soldiers received a mere 294,808 pounds.

For the 2-138, the sheer volume — Xboxes and iPods from family, treats and cards from well-wishers they've never met — prompts them to deny adamantly that they need anything. Once, after the unit arrived in August, some soldiers mused that they'd like soft toilet paper and a bag of Werther's Original. They received crates of fluffy rolls and 40 bags of hard caramel candy.

"You have to be careful what you ask for," said Capt. Steve Mattingly, of Bardstown, Ky.

The mail warehouses at this base 20 miles north of Baghdad are crammed with mail — 60,952 pounds arrived one day last week — from all over the world, funneled through Bahrain.

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