“Are you OK? Stay safe! I love you.”
USA Today has a moving piece on the intimacy and emotion of wartime phone calls (hat tip - reader dzodda).
You can donate phone cards to the troops here.
Posted in: Iraq
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Categories: Iraq
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When my first-cousin was serving in Irag two years ago, my grandmother said it was like having the wind knocked out of you to have to say good-bye and hang up the phone. May God bless and keep safe all our servicemen and women and their families, and Merry Christmas to one and all!
I donate my AT&T call minutes to the troops!
My pregnant sister’s husband is in Iraq. He might be home for the birth, we’re not sure. They’re both young (under 22).
She’s also legally blind.
It’s not just hard for the families, imagine how worried he is. New wife, pregnant, blind, not to mention all the stuff he has to worry about on the front lines, protecting his buddies, IED’s, etc.
They do get to communicate via phone and MySpace, but still…
When I hear people, especially Politicians, put down the war or talking about defeat, I sincerely want to physically attack them. When those people start making sacrifices like my sister and brother-in-law, then maybe I’ll listen to what they have to say.
Until then, they better keep they’re traps shut around me!
Another great program to help the troops:
The Cell Phones for Soldiers program was started in April 2004 by 13-year-old Brittany Bergquist and her 12-year-old brother Robbie of Norwell, Massachusetts.
Robbie and Brittany’s goal is to help our soldiers serving overseas call home. They hope to provide as many soldiers as possible with prepaid calling cards. Through generous donations and the recycling of used cell phones, Robbie and Brittany have already distributed thousands of calling cards to soldiers around the globe.
HERE
Soap I’ve donated several phones, and had people at work do the same. May God Bless our Troops and there families.
Michelle,
Why don’t you get AP an iPhone for Christmas and then donate it to the troops for him!
I know, that is an evil thought, teehee.
Merry Christmas to US troops.
God Bless you! Merry Christmas! It’s worth saying!
Stay safe!
The capability to communicate with loved ones has improved a lot since my days of globe trotting in the Military. We were very limited in our availability to call and if we could get a morale call it was limited to about 5 minutes. The article really brought the memories flooding back how my wife and I would hold back information too. She didn’t want me stressed about things I couldn’t fix back home while I didn’t want to scare her with the truth of the level of threat we were under so she wouldn’t worry. I’m glad this generation of heroes has that contact it is very important when you are on the other side of the world in harms way and are able to remember what you are fighting for.
During the first Gulf War my unit was assigned to build a tank gunnery range to get in some practice with our new M1A1’s. Since we built the range we were uh…lucky? enough to go first?? (Christmas Day was our slot) Christmas Eve we were at the range, in a Wadi in the middle of nowhere sleeping on top of our tanks. A freaking Apache helicopter lands and the dog gone gunner was dressed as Santa….too cool.
We found out that since we were at the range we would get priority at the phone tent for Christmas eve prime time in the US. Unfortunately for us that was 3:00 a.m. or so. When the guys tried to wake me to go, in my sleep I told them to f&@k off, so they did thinking I was awake. All of my family was at my Grandmother’s house, I would have been able to talk to them all at once. When they said in the article that nothing hurts worse than missing a call, they aren’t lying…….still does after 16 years….that was my Grandmother’s last Christmas…..
Getting to talk to them for just minutes only gives one a momentary relief. The minute they hang up the phone the worry begins again.
My son was deployed this past year. He wasn’t sure he would be home for the birth of his daughter so I went and stayed with his wife to wait and pray. He made it home one week before she was born. Watching his plane touch down and seeing him walk toward us were a few of the best moments of my life.
God bless our troops and their families.
Merry CHRISTmas everyone.
Do you mean your ATT rollover minutes? Can you tell me how to do this if that’s what you mean? We have tons of them and I would LOVE to donate them to the troops. Thanks in advance.
Don’t worry for us, our training, skills, and equipment are second to none. We are winning here, as we are driven to victory by our love of life, humanity, and freedom. Think of us, sure, say a prayer for us, absolutely. But never worry about us.
Please, take your concerns to a VA hospital, or the home of a wounded vet of all our wars. Those troops need the moral boost.
They have given all, for you… honor them.
* claps for Army
God bless you Army. We are moms…we worry.
But we also believe in you, support you and are so very proud of you. We brag about you every chance we get unabashedly.
We honor each and every one of you.
Army,
Thank you! Stay safe!
God Bless!
Thanks for reminding me to call home. I don’t do it nearly enough, and I will do so tonight.
Army hit the nail on the head.
Donnab13, keep bragging! You have every right to be proud.
For those of you in the box, talk to your commo geek. The MBITR can be used (even though it wasn’t designed) for SATCOM functions, and sometimes you can hit Iridium…I don’t know the mechanics of it, but I know it works.
Thank You Army.. God Bless.. Stay safe.
I worry about all of you hoping that you all come home safe. The fact is if your a parent wether or not your son or daughter is in Afghanistan or Iraq you still worry about those that are fighting to keep freedom alive. Thank you all for your service to our country, have a MERRY CHRISTMAS and a HAPPY NEW YEAR
All that have fought in war’s past and present deserve our respect and admiration for doing what other choose not to. Let’s not forget those that have payed the ultimate price for our freedoms say a prayer for them and their famlies to get through the holiday’s without their love ones. God Bless you all.
In some ways the ability to reach out and touch somebody with todays’ technology does make it tougher. Why in my day (imagine grumpy old man voice)back in the 80’s and 90’s all we had were landlines and MARS Grams. Anybody remember MARS grams? Cell phone, sat phone, shoot, we had standing phones. Stand in line at the pay phone, (remember those?)or dadgummit just write a letter. Young whipper snappers nowadays.
/Oh yeah and I walked through 5 ft of snow to school uphill both ways.
One other thing I did while stationed in Korea without the family is to get children’s books and read them aloud and record them on cassette tape and send them home. It really made the kid happy and now that she is older and almost grown up she still has them.
This year my husband is home, next year he’s scheduled to go back again. It’s always difficult but when I think back to what my aunt’s went through during WW2 waiting weeks and months to hear from their boyfriends (at the time).
Hubby always says not to worry as well, that his training will always kick in but sometimes things happen and they don’t come home.
Remember all those who didn’t make it home from all the wars, those who came back injured and those away from their loved ones. For the most part, everyone here is really nice and does pray for our troops and does what they can do to support them. However, I saw a bumper sticker yesterday while house hunting that said “I’ll support the troops when they come home and quit killing”. Nice, perhaps it was lgm or rusty. Notice, those two always are absent when it comes to supporting the troops (although rusty always claims to love his relatives who have served yet wants transgenered in but won’t serve himself but wants the military to be a social experiment). Oh well, they reap the benefits of those who serve and hope they will one day wake up and see the error of their ways.
Dear ARMY #13
We Moms regard all of you as “mine”- so we worry already (-:
God cover all of you Army - Navy -Marines - Air Force -Coast Guard—You’re all “mine”.
“MOM”
In the first Gulf War it was about 4 months before we got a “phone tent” A GP Large with 40 or so phones in it. We would wait in line for 3 hours or so and get 10 minutes on the phone. I used to think how lucky we were compared to guys in previous wars.
First of all, God bless you Army. We love you, support you, and pray for you all daily.
When I was in Vietnam we did not have cell phones or landlines. The only time I spoke to my Mom and Dad was when I called from Hong Kong on my 5 day R&R. Care packages from home often took up to a month to receive and were only delivered when we got resupplied in the field.
I remember one time when the Chinook came in with a slingload of supplies underneath and we had set our tanks and APC’s up in a night defensive position. The rotors picked up a log and dropped them on a landmine, blowing all of our mail, mashed potaotes, and other supplies all over the clearing. First hot meal we had scheduled for more than a month and it ended up being blown up. We thanked out Lt. for setting us up inside a minefield.
Our troops have it very hard on them and their families. Thankfully, the internet, cell phones, and other state of the art technologies help a tiny bit but don’t think for a minute that it makes it any easier. Their sacrifices are immense and we should be forever thankful to them all.
My wife and I received a pre-paid phone card in the mail as part of a promotion. We want to donate it to the troops. Does anyone have any suggestions on how we can accomplish this?
I didn’t see anything in the link MM provided on how or where to send pre-paid calling cards.
Dear Christian Soldier (#24), aka MOM:
On behalf of my colleagues and also from me, thank you.
I know what it’s like being OCONUS during the holidays away from family.
I spent more time outside the country (in peace and war)than stateside. To all my fellow Soldiers still deployed:
Have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Take care,
Cheryl(SFC MAC)
“ON THE EIGHTH DAY GOD CREATED THE UNITED STATES ARMY AND THE DEVIL STOOD AT ATTENTION”