Charity handles ‘any soldier’ cards

[unhappycamper]

Charity handles ‘any soldier’ cards
By Christine Simmons - The Associated Press
Posted : Tuesday Dec 18, 2007 9:48:22 EST

Holiday cards addressed to “any wounded soldier” at a military hospital won’t have to be returned unopened this year.

The American Red Cross is collecting, reviewing and delivering holiday greeting cards to recovering soldiers at military hospitals who aren’t specifically named on the envelope.

Since 2001, it’s been the policy of military hospitals to return all pieces of mail that aren’t addressed to a particular soldier due to security concerns from the terrorists attacks that year, said Lt. Col. Kevin Arata, spokesman for the Army Human Resources Command.

Since the Red Cross announced its program around Dec. 5, about 35,000 pieces of mail have been sent to the organization that will be distributed to 30 military hospitals across the country, as well as five Red Cross offices in combat zones overseas, including Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait, and a regional military medical center in Germany, said Joe Moffatt, executive director of service to armed forces at the American Red Cross.

This month’s program, a partnership through the American Red Cross, Defense Department and a mail and technology service provider, allows soldiers the comfort of a stranger’s words, said Army Sgt. Charles Eggleston, who’s being treated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/12/ap_anysoldiercards_071218/