A ? for those of you with friends/family actively serving

[emeleel]

Is it true that soldiers are not supposed to open any letters or packages if they don't recognize the sender's name/return address?

There are several 'net posts and e-mail group posts floating about with requests for letters or packages for a list of soldiers, most of whom are getting little to no mail. Some of them are injured, some not injured but with survivor's guilt. Many of them are from the 3rd ACR, which is one of the units that lost several people in that 16-fatality Chinook explosion some weeks back. One name on the list is the Major in charge of that unit. As far as I can tell, this is a legitimate list and request.

I'd like to send a "this-n-that" package to the Major (if I can scrape up the postage) but then someone mentioned that she understood that soldiers were not to be opening packages if they didn't know who they were from. I remember this being a concern last Christmas, with soldiers in Afghanistan - didn't they have to cut out Operation Dear Abby, or scale it back, or something because of this?

If anyone can tell me one way or the other, I'd appreciate it.

[conradd]

Nope, if you have the name of a soldier who is not getting mail, it should be fine to send. The problem with Operation Dear Abby was that folks were sending mail and packages addressed to "Any Soldier". It has to be addressed to a specific person.

Deb

[emeleel]

Okay, thank you so much! Now I just gotta find out how much postage I need.