I adopted a new soldier several months ago. I don’t know anything about him since I haven’t had any communication from him yet. It’s not uncommon for soldiers to not communicate, or to only communicate a few times, so I’m not really worried about it. It is a strange kind of thing to write to someone you know almost nothing about. Basically I know that this soldier is male, his name, rank (if he hasn’t been promoted), his mailing address and that he is in the Army, deployed somewhere in Iraq.
This is precious little information. Today I started to order him a t-shit and realized I don’t know his size. I also don’t know what kind of snacks he likes, if he has any allergies, is a health food nut, the kind of work he does, or if he is in southern Iraq or northern Iraq (the temps and weather conditions can really vary). Does he like country music or rap music? Is he 6’5” or 5’5”? Does he read westerns or sci-fi? Is he craving hot and spicy chips, or a moon pie? Does he need a set of sheets, or a sand scarf? Does he have access to a micro wave, or a freezer? These are all very helpful things to know when you are putting together a care package.
When organizing a care package there are some things you know are always welcome, like a brand new pair of socks, or something silly that will make them laugh. Over the years I have mailed blankets, pillows, books, movies, toys, games, puzzles, flash lights, bungee cords, duct tape, funnels, coloring books, crayons, markers, pens, paper, and even a set of horse shoes. I’ve also sent a lot of food and snacks: canned meat and soups, homemade cookies, cakes, soups, pickles and breads, tons of chips and candies, and mountains of jerky and gum.
I’ve also sent themed boxes for various holidays and other occasions, as well as the run of the mill boxes. I start with a military flat rate box and then stuffed to the gills with whatever I think a soldier might need or enjoy. I also try to include enough that they can share with buddies. The key to cramming the maximum amount into a care package is to take most things out of their original packaging. You also need to put liquid or goopy items like shampoo into zip lock bag just in case they burst open. I really like the vacuum sealed bags for large bulky items like blankets, sheets, and pillows. I can actually get all that into one box and still include bedtime story book.
As a Soldiers’ Angel member we always want to know how much a box weighs. My personal best is 17 lbs. Any angel you talk to can tell you their best.
I also like to decorate the boxes I send. We started doing this when my brothers were in the Navy. We wanted them to know how much we missed them. We also wanted them to be able to pick out their boxes right away. My youngest brother says he used to grab a forklift, put his box on the forks, then raise them all the way up and drive around showing his boxes off. He said was always became really popular at about that time. LOL
Building a box is really an involved activity. If you’re like me you have the post office deliver 25-50 flat rate boxes, with custom forms, to your house at a time so you don’t have to rely on the local post office having them. So, first you have to get all the stuff together. This could require you to do some shopping, cooking, knitting, sewing, or whatever. You will need to clean off your kitchen table to have room for everything, stack it all up on one end of the table. At the other end you will need to decorate, address and tape your box up. Then comes the packing, you need to distribute the weight, also try to cushion fragile items. Socks are great for this! Save really small and flat items for the last. Use the small items like gum and individually wrapped candies, lip balm, band-aids, to fill the gaps, and then lay the flat things like a letter, card, or magazine on the top. Then you have to tape it closed and start on the custom form. Of course if you are me, you will have to open the box at least twice to squeeze in something you forgot. Also if you are like me you will likely mess up the customs from on the very list thing and have to start all over again. They are such a pain!!!
Once all this is done you get to carry it down to the post office for mailing. This can be a hassle but I go to my local Hallmark shop, where there is a post office in the back. After I get through with my mailing I like to look around and I usually find something to put in the next box.
After all this work, there will come a day when you check your mailbox and see the thing that is most prized by all Soldiers Angels, a letter with “Free Mail” written where the stamp should be. This letter has been mailed from a combat zone. You are so excited you can’t wait to get to the house to read it, you tear it open on the spot and start to read what your soldier has written to you. You read it at least three times before you tack it your bulletin board with all your other Free Mail, then you get online and tell all your Angel friends that you just received Free Mail!!
NOTE: To learn more about adopting a deployed soldier visit www.soldiersangels.org
Showing posts with label Iraq. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Iraq. Show all posts
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Angels amoung us
In 2005 my son, Matt, was wounded while deployed in Iraq. (See Four words that stop you in your tracks) The Humvee he was driving hit a land mine. Matt’s feet were very badly wounded and he would eventually have his left leg amputated. His most serious injury was caused when shrapnel severed the artery in his left arm in three places. They did the life saving arterial graph in-country and then air lifted him to Germany.
Just after we were reunited and he was getting settled into his room at Brook Army Medical Hospital in San Antonio, I helped him go through the backpack that had traveled with him from Germany. There was basically everything in there that you need when you’ve been evacuated from a war zone with nothing. There was shaving stuff, toothbrush, tooth paste, socks, shorts, underwear, t-shirts, a comb, deodorant, even a phone card. It was really impressive. It was a plain black backpack with no markings. I asked Matt where he got it, thinking the Army had provided it somewhere along the way.
Not so. He told me he had been laying on a stretcher for a couple of hours in the back of a bus waiting to loaded onto the plane that would bring him back to the states. He was cold, (January in Germany) and his back was hurting from laying flat for so long. His wounds weren’t too bad since they had him medicated for that. He said he was laying there wishing he had a pillow and a blanket. All of a sudden he heard his name being called, then there was a lady with long blonde hair and a German accent standing beside him. She gave him a pillow covered in good wishes from a high school in Texas, a beautiful quilt made by a Navy family in Virginia, and the backpack. Then she was gone, and he hadn’t been able to understand a word she said. He said, “It’s like she was an angel of something!”
As I went through all the items in the backpack and got to the bottom, I found a business card for someone named Willie, from an organization called Soldiers’ Angles. There was an email address for Willie and a website for Soldiers’ Angels. I look up at Matt and said, “You’re right, it was an angel. Something called a Soldiers’ Angel.”
I checked out the website, www.soldiersangels.org, and learned it was started by the mother of two soldiers, Patti Patton-Bader. One of her sons, while deployed in Iraq, asked her to write letters to some of his men who had never received mail. She went a step farther and recruited her family and friends to help. Today Soldiers’ Angels have over 250,000 volunteers! The organization has many programs that help to care for deployed and wounded soldiers, and their families, as well as veterans.
All through Matt’s recovery, which took a year, the Angels were there to bolster us up with cards and letters, little packages and visits. It was amazing that people we had never met, and knew nothing about, would care so much for us. I still hear from Angels asking about Matt. (He’s doing great!)
I also sent an email to Willie, who turned out to be a German national and volunteer at Landstuhl Army Medical Center. Through the years we have continued to stay in touch and I have become a member of Soldiers’ Angels. Over the years I have adopted more than a dozen soldiers, written to many more, and recruited other Angels. Even after all these years, and all the people I have talked to, I’m still in wonder over the amazing work our Angels do, and the joy with which they do it!!
So keep in mind, where ever you go, and whatever you do, you never know when an Angel might touch your life.
Just after we were reunited and he was getting settled into his room at Brook Army Medical Hospital in San Antonio, I helped him go through the backpack that had traveled with him from Germany. There was basically everything in there that you need when you’ve been evacuated from a war zone with nothing. There was shaving stuff, toothbrush, tooth paste, socks, shorts, underwear, t-shirts, a comb, deodorant, even a phone card. It was really impressive. It was a plain black backpack with no markings. I asked Matt where he got it, thinking the Army had provided it somewhere along the way.
Not so. He told me he had been laying on a stretcher for a couple of hours in the back of a bus waiting to loaded onto the plane that would bring him back to the states. He was cold, (January in Germany) and his back was hurting from laying flat for so long. His wounds weren’t too bad since they had him medicated for that. He said he was laying there wishing he had a pillow and a blanket. All of a sudden he heard his name being called, then there was a lady with long blonde hair and a German accent standing beside him. She gave him a pillow covered in good wishes from a high school in Texas, a beautiful quilt made by a Navy family in Virginia, and the backpack. Then she was gone, and he hadn’t been able to understand a word she said. He said, “It’s like she was an angel of something!”
As I went through all the items in the backpack and got to the bottom, I found a business card for someone named Willie, from an organization called Soldiers’ Angles. There was an email address for Willie and a website for Soldiers’ Angels. I look up at Matt and said, “You’re right, it was an angel. Something called a Soldiers’ Angel.”
I checked out the website, www.soldiersangels.org, and learned it was started by the mother of two soldiers, Patti Patton-Bader. One of her sons, while deployed in Iraq, asked her to write letters to some of his men who had never received mail. She went a step farther and recruited her family and friends to help. Today Soldiers’ Angels have over 250,000 volunteers! The organization has many programs that help to care for deployed and wounded soldiers, and their families, as well as veterans.
All through Matt’s recovery, which took a year, the Angels were there to bolster us up with cards and letters, little packages and visits. It was amazing that people we had never met, and knew nothing about, would care so much for us. I still hear from Angels asking about Matt. (He’s doing great!)
I also sent an email to Willie, who turned out to be a German national and volunteer at Landstuhl Army Medical Center. Through the years we have continued to stay in touch and I have become a member of Soldiers’ Angels. Over the years I have adopted more than a dozen soldiers, written to many more, and recruited other Angels. Even after all these years, and all the people I have talked to, I’m still in wonder over the amazing work our Angels do, and the joy with which they do it!!
So keep in mind, where ever you go, and whatever you do, you never know when an Angel might touch your life.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Four words that stop you in your tracks
And the winner is…
Will you marry me?
We’re having a baby.
Oh shit, damn it!
There are a lot of four word combinations that can impact your life in very significant ways. The particular combination I’m talking about just happened to be, “There’s been an incident.”
If you just sit a minute and imagine all the situations in which this phrase could come up, you will undoubtlably think of minor occurrences such as spilled milk, or dire events like dropping the atomic bombs. For me these words came over the phone one evening in January 2005. They came completely unexpectedly.
Calling back on a message left on my answering machine, I reached to Department of the Army calling about my son, Matt, who was at that time deployed in Kirkuk, Iraq. I wasn’t stressed when I called, thinking it was another call to invite me to a family-of-the-troops function. Then came THE words… “There’s been an incident.”
You hear how a person’s mind goes blank and they can’t grab onto anything at times like this. That didn’t exactly happen to me. Instead, as the sergeant was talking and trying to explain things, my mind started racing with all the horrible possibilities: death, capture, impending death. Then came the four word combinations that brought some measure of relief:
No, he’s not dead.
No, he’s not dying.
He’s not a prisoner.
Over the next year Matt went through countless surgeries, including the amputation of his left leg, and much physical therapy. There were ups and downs, and steady improvement. Life is now back to normal, what ever that is, and Matt is looking at the possibility of being deployed again. Something he is up for, but I’m not sure I am.
I’d rather hear some four work combinations from him that go something like this:
She’s a great girl.
We are getting married.
We’re having a baby.
They lived happily ever after. (Ok, that is five words, but I could live with it.)
Will you marry me?
We’re having a baby.
Oh shit, damn it!
There are a lot of four word combinations that can impact your life in very significant ways. The particular combination I’m talking about just happened to be, “There’s been an incident.”
If you just sit a minute and imagine all the situations in which this phrase could come up, you will undoubtlably think of minor occurrences such as spilled milk, or dire events like dropping the atomic bombs. For me these words came over the phone one evening in January 2005. They came completely unexpectedly.
Calling back on a message left on my answering machine, I reached to Department of the Army calling about my son, Matt, who was at that time deployed in Kirkuk, Iraq. I wasn’t stressed when I called, thinking it was another call to invite me to a family-of-the-troops function. Then came THE words… “There’s been an incident.”
You hear how a person’s mind goes blank and they can’t grab onto anything at times like this. That didn’t exactly happen to me. Instead, as the sergeant was talking and trying to explain things, my mind started racing with all the horrible possibilities: death, capture, impending death. Then came the four word combinations that brought some measure of relief:
No, he’s not dead.
No, he’s not dying.
He’s not a prisoner.
Over the next year Matt went through countless surgeries, including the amputation of his left leg, and much physical therapy. There were ups and downs, and steady improvement. Life is now back to normal, what ever that is, and Matt is looking at the possibility of being deployed again. Something he is up for, but I’m not sure I am.
I’d rather hear some four work combinations from him that go something like this:
She’s a great girl.
We are getting married.
We’re having a baby.
They lived happily ever after. (Ok, that is five words, but I could live with it.)
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