SEVERED AT SEA
Care packages in limbo as families fear troops going hungry on ships
People pack care packages at a drive in Monson, Mass.
A picture a U.S. Marine deployed on the USS Tripoli shared of a meal that service members received on the ship.
A picture of a dinner on the USS Abraham Lincoln that a service member on board sent to family.
Karen Erskine-Valentine, a West Virginia pastor, shipped 22 boxes to a community member deployed on the USS Abraham Lincoln.
SPOTLIGHT| MILITARY
Dan F. was alarmed when his daughter, a Marine aboard the USS Tripoli, a warship deployed to fight the Iran war, sent him a photo of a meal on the ship. A mostly empty lunch tray carried one small scoop of shredded meat and a single folded tortilla.
He asked to go by his first name only to protect his daughter from retaliation.
A picture of a mid-April dinner on the USS Abraham Lincoln that a service member shared with his family showed a small handful of boiled carrots, a dry meat patty and a gray slab of processed meat.
Dan and other military family members fill boxes with items for their loved ones deployed to the Middle East: homemade fudge, Jolly Ranchers, crossword puzzle books, playing cards, toothpaste, Girl Scout cookies and fresh socks.
Those packages are now in limbo.
War cited
The U.S. Postal Service suspended mail delivery to 27 military ZIP codes after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran. The Army said there is no end date in sight for the suspension, despite a ceasefire.
The Postal Service and the Military Postal Service Agency suspended deliveries at the start of April "due to airspace closures and other logistical impacts from the ongoing conflict," Army spokesperson Maj. Travis Shaw said.
Mail in transit when the suspension took effect is held in secure Postal Service or military facilities "for future delivery once service resumes," he said, noting that is "contingent upon the reopening of airspace by civil authorities, and the area commander's evaluation of regional transportation and distribution stability."
David Coleman, a USPS spokesperson, said temporary suspensions to military ZIP codes can be monitored through the postal service's website. "No military mailings are being returned to the sender during a suspension," he added. "They are held until they can be delivered."
The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment.
Rationing supplies
Dan F.'s daughter told him fresh produce was nowhere to be found and service members ration their food supplies on the USS Tripoli. After she said the coffee machine on board broke down, he said he stopped drinking coffee in solidarity.
When she said hygiene products ran low, the family sent a care package with shampoo and conditioner, deodorant, toothpaste and tampons, filling every open space with candy and snacks. They filled a second box with clean socks and vitamin C packets after she said she felt a sore throat coming on.
Neither box, sent nearly a month ago, reached its destination.
"We have the strongest military in the world. You shouldn't be running out of food, and you shouldn't not be able to get mail on the ship," said Dan, 63, who also served in the Marines.
"The one thing we had over our adversaries (was) we fed our people," he said.
A Texas mother whose son, a Navy sailor, also aboard the Tripoli, said she panicked after hearing he was hungry on the ship. Her family spent at least $2,000 on care packages, but none reached her son. She asked to remain anonymous out of fear her son would face retaliation.
The sailor said service members on the ship eat when they can and divvy up food evenly when one person gets more than the others.
Supplies "are going to get really low" and the crew doesn't anticipate any port visits until the ship returns from its mission, he wrote in a message March 11.
"Morale is going to be at an all-time low," he wrote.
Boxes never arrive
Karen Erskine-Valentine, pastor of a church in Shepherdstown, W.Va., said she was alarmed to hear from a community member whose son is in the Middle East aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln about the poor quality of food on the ship. It's one of two aircraft carriers sent to the region, along with the USS Gerald Ford. A third, the USS George H.W. Bush, is on the way.
"The food is tasteless and there's not nearly enough and they're hungry all the time," she said. "That kind of breaks your heart."
The community sent 18 boxes to the sailor to share with his shipmates. She sent another four boxes April 15. Shipping alone cost at least $540, she said.
They have yet to reach their destination.
Karen Turgeon, organizer of an annual care package drive for military families in Monson, Mass., rushed to organize an extra drive for the four service members from her community who were sent to the Middle East after the war broke out.
None of the group's packages reached their destinations. The drive since redirected its energy toward dropping cards of encouragement and flowers at the homes of service members' families.
The Tripoli has been at sea for more than a month since it left its home port in Japan to join the Iran war. The 3,500 sailors and Marines aboard the Tripoli and its two accompanying warships are tasked with enforcing the U.S. blockade of ships leaving Iranian ports, according to the U.S. Central Command.
On April 15, the USS Gerald Ford broke the record for the longest deployment of any aircraft carrier since the Cold War: 295 days. It retreated to Crete for maintenance work March 23. The military said a laundry fire erupted on the ship, and it was plagued with plumbing problems.
Past interruptions
It's common for wars and other operations to delay package deliveries to deployed military members, said Lynn Heidelbaugh, a curator at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum. She said she had not come across an all-out suspension of mail delivery to a military ZIP code like those now in place, but the absence of a formal announcement doesn't mean mail hasn't been stalled before.
The Military Postal Service provides mail service across 76 countries, according to the Postal Service's Office of the Inspector General. It operates 1,670 Postal Service operations worldwide and moves about 80 million pounds of mail a year, an agency fact sheet says.
Non-expedited shipping of packages to the Middle East usually takes up to 24 days, the postal service says. In 2003, mail took an average 11 to 14 days to reach service members deployed to the Iraq war, according to a Government Accountability Office report.
"Interruptions and delays in mail service have been a part of every American conflict since the Revolutionary War," USPS historian Steve Kochersperger said. He noted a "tremendous backlog of mail following the D-Day invasion of 1944."
USPS has no internal records about mail delayed to military addresses during recent Middle East conflicts, but "newspaper reports from the time indicate there were numerous disruptions," he said.
Dawn Penrod, treasurer of an American Legion Auxiliary chapter based in Edgewater, Md., said she spent an hour at the post office trying to send a care package to her nephew, an Army Reserve member in Bahrain.
Other chapter members who sent care packages to service members for decades had never seen such delays and suspensions, she noted.
"They were delivering mail and packages all the time," she said. "I just don't know why they can't now."
"Morale is going to be at an all-time low."
A Navy sailor on the USS Tripoli, on the effect of the warship's food and supplies running low, in tandem with the suspension of care package delivery and no anticipated port visits.
