Mail Call!!!

Cpl. Tammara Kime USMC


Pvt. Matthew Sears USMC



Today word went out that there was going to be a MASSIVE shipment of holiday mail arriving on Camp Fallujah. All units were asked to send as many available hands as possible to the "working party". You gotta love what the Marines call the least agreeable of duties. At around noon, from the nearby post office, I could hear an energetic cadence of voices shouting out unit numbers. I grabbed my camera and digital voice recorder and headed in the direction of the noise. I found dozens of sweaty Marines and sailors, male and female alike, systematically sorting and tossing huge orange mailbags, overstuffed white and blue postal envelopes and heavily taped and addressed cardboard boxes. Each parcel found its way somewhere down the bucket line into a specific unit's conex box. It was pure poetry in motion. One Marines' voice, a lowly E-1 private from Grand Junction Colorado, rose enthusiastically above the others exhorting and entertaining the daisy chain of workers. Pvt. Matthew Sears (meritoriously promoted to his present rank for being 6 hours late from a 96 hour holiday pass) was the grand motivator of the festivities. Pvt. Sears' day job is as a mechanic on Amphibious Assault Vehicles, but on this hot Fallujah afternoon he reigned supreme over the festivities. But the heart and soul of the mail call was Cpl.Tammra Kime of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Cpl. Kime read and called out the unit address on every package as she hefted it into the arms of the first GI in the assembly line. Like an expert coxswain calling cadence she kept the mail flowing down the line with rhythmic efficency.