Mail Call: Remembering Those Who Serve

Deployed Troops

With on-going conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, American soldiers’ deployments take them many places around the globe. Although their guns and weapons are much different from those of the American Doughboys of World War I and the GIs of World War II, one thing they all have in common is the desire to receive messages from home. All messages convey love, respect, and support, but the most appreciated are those that are handwritten since the sender took the time out of their day to put words to paper.

For the Doughboys of World War I, mail to the fronts in Europe from the United States took weeks and even months to arrive because they had to travel by ship through the hostile waters of the Atlantic Ocean. With German U-Boats plying the waters of the Atlantic and unrestricted submarine warfare, many letters were lost at sea, and the lonely Doughboys in the trenches sometimes waited in vain for messages from home. But, once one of the 35 million pieces of mail reached its recipient on the front lines, a little slice of heaven arrived to transport the soldier back home for as long as it took to read the letter and digest its contents. These moments of relief helped the boys of World War I briefly forget the cold and stark reality that saw their comrades maimed or killed in the mortar and gas attacks common to the trenches.