Jacquielynn Floyd of the Dallas Morning News wrote a great article today mentioning our care package efforts for American soldiers still fighting a war in Afghanistan. Excerpts below and link to the full article:
Have you heard? There’s a war on. It’s easy to forget, with our more immediate preoccupations and lamentably short attention spans, that nearly 100,000 U.S. troops are still deployed in Afghanistan.
... Another Dallas-based support organization, Airborne Angel Cadets, maintains its determination to ship out care packages to thousands of deployed U.S. soldiers “until everybody’s home.”
This is a remarkable group, which has sent off a shipment at least once every six weeks since 2005. The Airborne Angels (so called because the original founder is a flight attendant) sent more than 3,000 cartons of goods last year and is targeting 4,000 for 2012.
“It has become harder,” said Amber Oler, a spokesman and board member for the group that includes about 75 volunteers. “Part of it is the economy, and part of it is ‘out of sight, out of mind.’”
These groups also serve active-duty soldiers who never get any public attention — those, for instance, still stationed in Iraq or in other remote posts. Oler said Airborne Angels supplies some encampments with as many as 1,500 troops and some with as few as 30.
The absolute simplicity of the things some of these soldiers regard as rare and fabulous treats is enough to make your heart hurt.
Letters from active-duty personnel are posted to the Cadets’ website (airborneangelcadets.com) expressing joyous gratitude for tuna, playing cards, instant noodles, protein bars and — perhaps the soldier’s best friend — disposable baby wipes.
My favorite photo posted to their website shows U.S. soldiers sharing care-package items from a “Texas Fiesta” themed shipment with Afghan children at an impromptu party. The excited kids are wearing sombreros and whacking away at a candy-filled piñata.
What the USO needs — and the Cadets and all the groups out there still faithfully illustrating that “supporting the troops” really does run deeper than a bumper sticker — is cash.
Mailing costs for getting those boxes to the other side of the world are enormous, and volunteers are by experience the best judges of what particular groups of soldiers need and want.
“Mail day is like Christmas for us here,” say several soldiers’ letters, echoing what I heard from my brother so many times.
It’s not just the treats and gifts. For a soldier on the other side of the world, it’s proof that you’re not stuck here in an often hostile, sometimes terrifying place on your own.
“Supporting the troops” isn’t a political slogan. It’s just about ordinary gratitude and decency.
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