Comments by "Evan" (@MrEvanfriend) on "V-Mail - WW2 Email" video.

  1. As a veteran of the Iraq war, a letter is STILL important in wartime. When you're in the infantry, you don't have access to cell phones and internet and whatnot, and written letters from home are the biggest morale booster you can imagine. No matter how bad your day had been, when you got a letter, or two or three, it made that day markedly better. I was lucky, I had a girlfriend who wrote me every day, parents who wrote a couple times a week, and other friends and family who would write occasionally. If we were far enough out that mail was a weekly event instead of a daily one, I'd get a stack of maybe a dozen letters, and as soon as I had a minute of down time, I'd sneak off to as private a place as I could find, read them all, and forget where I was for a few minutes. I had one letter from my girlfriend that even distinctly smelled like her, I kept that one in my flak jacket for a month or two until the scent finally wore off. The only way I can describe mail call when you're at war is like Christmas morning when you're a little kid. When the mail comes in, it's just like running to look at what Santa left under the tree for you. It's one of the best feelings in the world, in a place where feel-good moments aren't exactly commonplace.
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  2. When I was in Iraq in 2005-2006, we had something very similar. Even then, we weren't allowed unsecured two-way communication devices, and so letter writing was the best way for us to communicate with people back home and vice versa. So the Marine Corps did something called Moto Mail. Instead of microfilm or whatever, people who wanted to write a deployed Marine could send an email to somebody (I don't know who, I never wrote a Moto Mail, just received them), and then they'd print it out in a format similar to a tax return check and get it to you in a day or two as opposed to about a week. It lacked the personality of a written letter, but it was the quickest way for someone to get in touch with us. I got Moto Mails from my dad a few times, and a few other family members, including some cousin I didn't know I had who wrote to give me remarkably bad advice (fortunately I knew better) from someone who had never been anywhere near a combat zone. I preferred normal letters.
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  3.  @VictoryOrValhalla14  We had sat phones that sorta kinda worked...if you could get your hands on one. Two per company, and one was usually broken. And the one that "worked", you had to find the highest point you could, prop your rifle up as high as possible, and put the little magnetic antenna thing on the muzzle.
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  4.  @VictoryOrValhalla14  I was in and around Fallujah in '05-06....never had to make a phone call under fire. Excellent story though. All those ridiculous shitty moments make great stories later.
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  5.  @donalddodson7365  Never heard Viperous Aggrevators before, but it is an apt and hilarious term for them, and I plan to use it!
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