Where once there was a weekly mail call, a plywood cabin now stands in the desert.
Inside, Marines in mottled brown camouflage hurriedly tap away at a bank of computers, checking e-mail and downloading pictures of loved ones.
“First time I was here in the gulf, all we had was `snail mail,'” Staff Sgt. Reginald Williams said. “Now my wife can write to me every day and my kids can hear my voice. That does so much for morale, both ours and theirs.”
If home does not seem as distant as during past deployments, that is just the way the military wants it.
Digital pictures and sound files accompany Williams’ daily messages home, while some soldiers in nearby Qatar use personal DVD players to play home movies–prized far more than food when tearing open care packages. Around the Persian Gulf, lines of impatient American soldiers twirl donated calling cards as they await their turn for a “morale call” home.
On bases in the United States, family support centers such as the one at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa do a brisk business lending digital cameras and video telephones to families who want to send pictures to those serving overseas. Military base Web sites offer families and military personnel a variety of suggestions on how to feel close to loved ones while far away.
And mostly, it’s working, said Air Force Staff Sgt. Jill McClarney.
“It went from not knowing where they were or how long they’d be gone to . . . daily contact by e-mail,” she said of family interaction with military members half a world away. “Now they can talk to them, they can see them. The families aren’t waiting silently.”
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McClarney helps MacDill families print school pictures onto T-shirts, pillowcases and mouse pads to send abroad in care packages, and each month, the base offers military spouses a free 15-minute phone call on an internal phone line–often to bases that commercial phone lines do not reach.
Usually the conversations are about the mundane details of home life.
In fact, there’s nothing better, said Army Sgt. 1st Class Reggie Johnson, whose job in Qatar is disposing of explosive ordnance. He rises at 4 a.m. to make sure he can find an available phone.
`Not there to see it’
“You want to know if your kid skinned up his knee or got his first kiss,” Johnson said. “I want to know what’s going on there. You’re not there to see it.”
Not all is reported. Service members are forbidden for security reasons from revealing their location and mission, and for their part, military families seem just as disciplined.
Because of that, what relatives do not say during phone calls can be as moving as what they do say, many military personnel said.
“Both my mother and aunt are strong women and they understand I’m on a mission, and that I’m a soldier in a place of conflict,” said Army Pfc. Bryan Segers. A military police gunner from Downers Grove, Segers guards Camp As Sayliyah in Qatar.
“I think I can hear them holding back,” he said. “So far as showing worry, they don’t do that because they know it’s more pressure to deal with.”
It’s almost an unspoken rule among experienced military spouses, said McClarney, whose husband also is in the armed forces and is away frequently.
“Don’t worry them about things that they don’t have control over,” she said. “What can you do about the dryer buzzer going off, or the kids crying in the other room, or only having one hand free to do all this stuff?”
Well-established networks exist on each base to mentor spouses dealing with first-time or lingering deployments, McClarney said.
Beyond that, MacDill has added a host of links to its Web site in the past two years that give advice on everything from long-distance romance to packing the perfect care package.
But for all the efforts to connect troops to their families at home, the view of military deployment through the prism of home life often befuddles soldiers.
Why all the jerky?
Troops confined to a base in the Qatari desert welcome just about any kind of care package from home, said Johnson, fellow Army Sgt. 1st Class Sean Rowe and Spec. Tony Bowling. But they shook their heads at the puzzling amount of summer sausage, toilet paper and beef jerky that families have been mailing.
“Like, I’m out on a rock with a knife eating out of a bag?” pondered Rowe, who was surrounded by office supplies and was a short walk from a store offering candy bars and cold drinks.
“`Can I get you stamps?'” mimicked Johnson.
” `Do you need any more pens and pencils?'” added Bowling, picking up the joke.
For all the advances in technology, care packages and new phone privileges, however, it is the simplest gifts that most strike a chord, said Army Pfc. Jessica House.
For Christmas, her younger sister sent a photograph of the two of them together.
“I have the same picture here, but it caught me by surprise,” House said, pushing back tears. “It was just me and my sister.”
“Sometimes that’s all it takes,” said Army 1st Lt. Lisa Yates. “To know that they are thinking about you.”
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