Katana, over at Belleau-Wood is a 2LT, serving her country and sharing her new husband with Iraq for the next 15 months. She wrote a post which I am having her guestblog here. I hope hearing her perspective on the impact we can have on one another will move us to continue to act on behalf of our countrymen one at a time. For more information on how to do that please see the links at the end of this post.
Morale = Letters from Home
While training in Fort Lewis, WA I had the pleasure of being guided by an officer who honed my leadership compass and showed me what good, humble leadership could do for a platoon. He taught us how to be good leaders, how to know the difference between spot-checking and micro-managing and how to take care of our soldiers without turning into parents.
One of the many lessons he taught us was that a soldier's morale depended on the Letters from home. He said it casually, and I gave it little thought, but as the long days and longer nights passed I came to realize how right he was.
The first week, I got no letters. Not having any word from home wasn't so bad.
The second week, I got no letters. My heart would leap, then sink as each mail call yielded no letters for little Katana.
The third week, letters came in earnest as the mail from my boyfriend in Korea had finally crossed the ocean and made its way to Fort Lewis. Each time my name was called for mail call, I felt such giddiness! Letters meant someone took time out of their day to write and mail something to you. Letters meant someone thought about you. Letters meant someone cared about you even though I had been displaced from reality and put in an environment that was away from my loved ones.
The fourth week I received three packages – cookies, cookies, and did I mention cookies? This training was the first lesson I had in the importance of support from home. This was only a month-long training and miniscule in comparison to the long Deployments that our soldiers experience now. It's important, now more than ever, for our soldiers to receive support from home.
Kat
A life in Pictures and Words
http://blog.belleau-wood.org
A blog and Photo Gallery.
I have been doing milsupport since early summer. It started out as something I had been meaning to do for some time and but the intention had evaporated again and again with the pressure of 4 kids, a household, homeschooling and a couple of support groups I ran.
At some point I found this passage and others like it while doing some surfing on the net. Watergate Summer, one of the first blogs I ever visited, mentioned working with these folks coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan and so I finally found myself on site that matched troops with individuals and groups.
"Public opinion and material and emotional support have been shown to affect the impact of deployment sacrifices and exposure to trauma" (Bolton, Litz, Glenn, Orsillo, & Roemer, 2002; Koenen, Stellman, Stellman, & Sommer, 2003)
Support was something I could do and so it began for me, my homeschool group and my family. We haven't looked back.
In milsupport, you can bring a little peace to a few folks at a time. Is there an impact? Is your time wasted or are you just holding back the ocean with a spoon? I leave this to Katana and those like her to answer. --Hope
Tips for letter writing and packages Adoptaplatoon AnyMarine AnySoldier AnySailor AnyAirman
JMJ
Yippee!!! I finally got an email from one of my Marines...ironically, enough it was the last one I took on. It really is a relief to have some contact. I have been flying blind for two months. The guy is ^$%# hilarious. It should be a good correspondence. This group is one that came out of Kaneohe Bay where my dh was stationed in the early 80s...I have heard more stories about his time in and Mokes and floats--- well they are still funny and he still tells them when I ask him, too. Most are offcolor a bit so I can't relay too many to any of these Marines until I get a better sense of them...no sense in freaking them out--as far as they are concerned I am some stationwagon-driving soccermom housewife...not that they haven't probably participated in most of what Tony describes...its just probably not a mixed company thing they want to do with a stranger...
I went to a birthday party today with 3 of 4 kiddos...one wouldn't go...seems he is unhappy with is present relationship with said birthday boy and didn't want to play laser tag, have an open snack bar tab and video tokens be hanged...while I was a bit uncomfortable with having to profer some sort of explanation as to his absence..I did have to hand it to my 8 year old...he has some personal integrity--- no??? Anyway, they are all hopped up on sugar and mildly unhappy with the "okay you just had your crap ration for the weekend folks" notice they got from mom on the way home...
I have not been as productive as I would like to have been...no, I guess I wouldn't have liked to have been, but I should have been nonetheless...that trip with my parents just sucked the life right out of me for some reason. I have the weekend though...we will see how it goes.
I need to pick up papers for the coupon group, write a letter about recent vacations for a military support group (pictures by the pool, drinks with little umbrellas...not!) amd copy it 20 times...everyone does this in the group and then we each get a copy so that we have 20 unique letters to share with which ever group we are helping..pretty clever I thought...
I am tired...not bare bones tired just generically so...I really don't even have a rant, piss or moan. yuh I know ...imagine that....I am up early to go and work at the dance studio for a while in the morning...seems I trade web work etc for Jo's dance lessons...the kids have tutoring in reading and martial arts. I need to gather books and set some goals for next week...not so good at reasonable ones, but I'll aspire not to aspire!
