Company for your misery:
Next time, hide the staple gun ~ and the cat. (^:
Posted on 12/27/2003 11:05:06 AM PST by Ragtime Cowgirl
“Any soldier” letter leads to “happily ever after”
BAGHDAD, Iraq – It was late November of 1990 and the build-up of troops, equipment and supplies for the first Persian Gulf War had begun. Capt. Mark Olinger, a logistics officer, was serving with the 528th Support Battalion, U.S. Army Special Operations Task Force, at the King Fahd International Airport in eastern Saudi Arabia.
During his time in Desert Storm, Olinger often visited Saudi Arabia’s King Khalid Military City. During one visit for a planning conference, Olinger happened to grab a letter out of a stack of “Any Soldier Mail.”
“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 (G4). “And it was different; it was addressed with purple ink.” The letter was from Sandy Martin, a middle school choir teacher from Quilan, Texas. Little did Olinger know that this particular letter would change the rest of his life.
“My dad was in the Army and my mom’s dad was in the Army,” said Sandy. “It was just our patriotic duty to be supportive (of the troops).” Olinger called it a “standard, patriotic” letter and said he wrote back a few days later with “the normal response: thank you for your support.” Within the next few weeks, Olinger had received another letter from Sandy and the two continued to correspond throughout the rest of the deployment.
“Her letters were nice and upbeat,” said Olinger. “But there wasn’t really a special connection.” However, when Olinger redeployed to Fort Bragg, N.C., in March 1991, Sandy extended an invitation for Olinger to visit her in Texas.
“Something intrigued me, probably something in one of her letters,” said Olinger, who took her up on the offer to visit. “I was excited to meet him,” said Sandy. “But not because there had ever been anything romantic in our letters. We were a little too mature for that.”
“I was looking forward to seeing her,” said Olinger. “I even sent her flowers at school.” The two met in early May of 1991. Olinger, on block leave, drove from North Carolina to Texas to see Sandy before flying to his home state of California.
“It was love at first sight, however silly that sounds,” said Sandy. “It was just a chemical reaction. It struck me that I was just so comfortable to be around him from the start, and knowing already from our letters that we shared so many of the same beliefs and priorities in life made everything so easy.”
“Right away we clicked,” added Olinger. The two spent several days together, dining at restaurants, visiting the Dallas fairgrounds and meeting Sandy’s parents.
“The days were very fun and very relaxing,” said Olinger. “They were good times.” Eventually, Olinger headed to California, but the two 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. “I felt like she was the one,” he said.
Sandy accepted the proposal and six months later they were married. The Olingers celebrated their 12th wedding anniversary this December.
“During Desert Storm I wrote 12 letters and ended up with six pen pals and one husband,” joked Sandy.
“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.”
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
Whenever I am asked to ponder on the sacrifices of our troops, I think of the loneliness that inspired their love filled letters written to their family and loved ones back home.Sullivan Ballou's letter, abbreviated below, to his beloved wife Sarah, July 14,1861 Camp Clark, Washington DC, as it was read on the PBS series The CIVIL WAR by Ken Burns series....
Dear Sarah:--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days - perhaps tomorrow. And lest I should not be able to write you again I feel impelled to write a few lines that may fall under your eye when I am no more.I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how American Civilization now leans upon the triumph of the government and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and suffering of the Revolution. And I am willing - perfectly willing - to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this government, and to pay that debt.
Sarah, my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me with mighty cables that nothing but omnipotence can break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me irresistibly with all those chains to the battlefield. The memory of all the blissful moments I have enjoyed with you come crowding over me, and I feel most deeply grateful to God and you, that I have enjoyed them for so long. And how hard it is for me to give them up and burn to ashes the hopes and future years, when, God willing, we might still have lived and loved together, and see our boys grown up to honorable manhood around us.
If I do not return, my dear Sarah, never forget how much I loved you, nor that when my last breath escapes me on the battle field, it will whisper your name...
Forgive my many faults, and the many pains I have caused you. How thoughtless, how foolish I have sometimes been!...
But, 0 Sarah, if the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they love, I shall always be with you, in the brightest day and in the darkest night... always, always. And when the soft breeze fans your cheek, it shall be my breath, or the cool air your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by.
Sarah do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for me, for we shall meet again...
Sullivan Ballou was killed a week later at the 1st Battle of Bull Run.
Sullivan Ballou was killed a week later at the 1st Battle of Bull Run.
Of course, Carlo, he is a Dragon Fly.
Where did we get the idea of mutilating a plant's reproductive organ in order to guess if somebody loves us?
Company for your misery:
Next time, hide the staple gun ~ and the cat. (^:
Warning, may send Lazamataz over the edge.
On the other hand, it may inspire Saddam to spill the WMD secrets.
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