Airmen ensure deployed troops get their mail

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Mark Getsy
  • 386th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs
SOUTHWEST ASIA (AFPN) --  When the truck backs into place and the back doors open, brown and white cardboard boxes are stacked far and wide. These are not ordinary boxes.

They may be special links to families and friends back home during the holiday season.

Knowing this, the five people at the post office at this base do their best to process, sort and deliver the packages to their customers as quickly as possible.

“When I got here in September, we averaged about 180 to 200 packages a day,” said Senior Airman Donnell Coleman, a postal augmentee. “Now, we are averaging over 400 packages a day.”

So base officials have started a squadron volunteer program to help out. Under the “Elf Program,” each day a squadron sends as many people as it can to assist the postal crew in unloading the morning truck and sorting mail and packages.

“The volunteers really help us get a head start each morning,” Airman Coleman said. “The faster we unload the truck, the faster we can get the packages ready for pickup.”

Storage space inside the small post office is limited. Postal officials ask that each squadron continue to make a daily run and pick up their packages.

Staff Sgt. Cherika Dyer, NCO in charge at the post office, said the holiday season is busy, but also very special to her staff and base patrons.

“All the troops here look forward to getting mail,” she said. “We get calls constantly asking if a package came in. It’s nice to see people’s faces when the package they were expecting from back home finally arrives.”