Battlefield mail carriers honored, welcomed home

SALT LAKE CITY — "Mail from home" would likely be on the list of items considered most important to a deployed service member. If so, that would make the person delivering that mail pretty popular as well.

Some 29 Army reservists with the 478th Human Resource Company were recognized at Fort Douglas on Saturday, several months after a yearlong deployment that saw one platoon deployed to Iraq and another to Afghanistan.

Among their accomplishments: getting holiday packages delivered efficiently for the first time in the entirety of the United States' military involvement in Afghanistan, according to their deployment battalion commander, Lt. Col. David Gillum.

"This is the best postal platoon I've ever had," he said. "For nine years, the holiday mail in Afghanistan did not work." Holiday packages were delivered this past Christmas "for the first time ever," he said.

Company Commander Maj. Bart H. Stevens said mail is "a huge morale builder" for soldiers and other military personnel. Technology like e-mail and Skype cut into the number of letters sent back and forth, but many remote areas of Afghanistan have little or no Internet availability, and neither Skype nor Gmail can deliver a package.

"Holiday mail is huge, because many times this is the only time they receive something from home," Stevens said. Technology also builds anticipation for boxes that come and go in the mail. "It's very frustrating when an e-mail gets through and says 'Did you get my package' and it hasn't arrived a month later."

The personnel collecting and delivering packages and other mail travel in convoys and by air, making deliveries in some of the most remote outposts. Stevens said he considers the platoons "very fortunate" to have returned home with no casualties.

Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, was the keynote speaker at the welcome home ceremony. "I never think we say 'thank you' enough. That's why I'm here today," he said.

The platoons were deployed from October 2009 to November 2010. Their headquarters is at Fort Douglas, with men and women drawn from Utah, Montana, Washington state and Idaho.

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