Marines shipping extra gear back home

[unhappycamper]

Marines at Camp Eagle, an outpost in Ramadi, wait in line to send mail home. The Marines are leaving in April, and many sent their extra gear home so they wouldn’t have to carry it with them on the trip home. A traveling post office goes to Camp Eagle, population 140, about once every two weeks.


Marines shipping extra gear back home
By Ashley Rowland, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Tuesday, March 10, 2009

CAMP EAGLE, Iraq — Which costs more: Buying a box full of toothbrushes or mailing it halfway around the world?

At tiny Camp Eagle, population 140, the mail doesn’t come very often — just once every two weeks, when a postal clerk stops at this tiny outpost on the outskirts of Ramadi.

When the clerk came one day a few weeks ago, Marines lined up at his makeshift post office (a table set up between a plywood hut and a Humvee) to mail home their extra gear, stuffed into green duffel bags and sturdy black boxes.

"It’s stuff we don’t use any more, so we don’t have to carry it back on the plane through three different countries," Lance Cpl. Nathan Perrault said. "It’s easier this way."

The members of Golf Company, 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines are going home in April. Most of their boxes were stuffed with military-issued boots, sleeping bags and clothes, plus gifts sent from home — mainly, toothbrushes.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=61225