CAMP LIBERTY, Baghdad -- Mail is a big deal here, especially from wives and girlfriends. It seems like every soldier carries a picture of a girl left behind in the states.

Some soldiers also worry whether their girl will still be there when they get back. A year’s deployment in Iraq is hard on relationships. I met one soldier here whose wife left him during his last tour in Iraq. He said he went home to Fort Lewis and she was just gone.

This soldier still wears his wedding band, just not on his ring finger. He said it’s still special to him. The band says “love forever” in Gaelic,
Another soldier I traveled to Iraq with could talk of nothing else during a layover in Germany than his worry that his girlfriend would leave. Getting mail helps ease those worries.

Soldiers also email, of course. But Internet access is hard to come by at this camp. The guys in my tent have to walk a half mile or so to the Morale, Welfare and Recreation center and then wait in line for an available computer.

Some soldiers burn their mail in a barbecue grill outside my tent after they are done reading it.

The soldiers said that, if they just threw it away, insurgents can find the mail and get the addresses.

What insurgents do is write the families and tell them their loved one is dead, soldiers said.

-- Sean Cockerham