“I grabbed it because I liked the handwriting,” said Olinger, now a lieutenant colonel serving in Iraq as the 1st Armored Division’s logistics officer...
“Right away we clicked,” added Olinger. The two spent several days together, dining at restaurants, visiting the Dallas fairgrounds and meeting Sandy’s parents....kept in touch by telephone while he was home on leave.
“I couldn’t eat a thing the whole two weeks he was gone,” said Sandy.
When Olinger returned to Sandy’s house he proposed.
The Olingers celebrated their 12th wedding anniversary this December.
“We’d barely known each other a year and most of that time together was spent apart, but I have no regrets,” said Olinger. “The two best things I’ve done in my life are join the Army and marry Sandy.”
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Rare warm and fuzzy article from Combined Joint Task Force 7. (^:
8 "If you know someone who's serving there, write to them; write often; write regularly." ~ ["Adopt" a Soldier ~ please contact me, or tiki.] ~ USS Clueless | Steven Den Beste
If I cannot find romance, I want everyone else to be miserable too.
The spirit of Christmas has survived through the ages, uninterrupted by winter weather, national calamity, world wide poverty, or even WAR. So was it true in the darkest days of our Nation;
During the gravest hours in our country's history, in a nation at war with itself, many Southern diaries tell the story of Santa running the blockaded ports in Dixie to fill children's stockings with what little the parents could spare to make the day special for them.Even the stoic General Sherman, allowed and encouraged his soldiers to play Santa to the impoverished Southern children by attaching tree-branch antlers to their horses and bringing food to the starving families in the war ravaged Georgia countryside.
The most famous Christmas gift of the war was sent by telegram from William Tecumseh Sherman to Abraham Lincoln on December 22, 1864.The gift, of course, wasn't the guns, the ammunition or the cotton, but the beginning of the end of the Civil War.“I beg to present you as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with 100 and 50 guns and plenty of ammunition, also about 25,000 bales of cotton.”
A Christmas 1944 Telegraph from the War;On 4 November 1944, whilst serving in Burma, my grandfather, William Ellis sent a telegraph to his wife to arrive in time for Christmas Day, it read:
'My own darling,My grandmother kept this telegraph until her dying day (1999) even though William died in 1966. It is now framed and hangs on their son's wall.
With this I send my very best wishes for Christmas and the New Year. Although I am far away from home at this Christmas year, still in my heart, as always you seem especially near, but you must know today that all my love for you comes with this wish for Christmas and for all the New Year too.Love from Bill'
Dorinda (Ellis) Garfield