You may know about the military campaigns throughout the years but many do not know about the crucial impact that letters from home have had on the troops serving overseas.
Letters have been written to and from those serving in the military since the Revolutionary War. They have played an important role in keeping them connected to home.
Gary Morgan, from the Museum of Texas Tech said when you come to the exhibit, Mail Call, you will get a real sense that it was more than just a letter to those who were deployed.
"It's more than the message in the letter, it's the actual tangible, physicality of the letter," Morgan said. "If it was written in handwriting, it was written in the handwriting of your loved one and when you hold, read it, you have got a real tangible connection with the person that has written that letter. You just can't capture that through an email or a Skype."
The importance of these letters holds true even today.
Eric Washington, a Marine Corps veteran, said it was a big deal when the mail truck came in during his time in Afghanistan.
"One of the things that happens regularly when you're deployed that long is, you kinda start to feel separated from the rest of where you came from," Washington said. "You feel like they don't understand you and you don't understand them anymore and mail call is an incredibly important time. We'd have the trucks pull up, we had our mail delivered via seven tons, they'd come up maybe once a month if we were lucky and they would be filled with boxes and letters and they'd sort it all out, it was sorta like Christmas. You'd be standing there waiting for you name to be called to go up there and get your letter."
Usually when you send a letter, it needs to be in an envelope with a stamp. Doctor Steve Maxner, the Director for the Vietnam Center and Archive said there are cases where the Post Office accepted letter no matter what condition they were in.
"There's examples of this, for instance, from Vietnam where soldiers would literally grab whatever they could, a piece of cardboard, a part of a box that contained c-rations, whatever, and literally write a letter home on that. Put the address and hand it in and the Post Office honored that. It didn't have to be on paper, it didn't have to be in an envelope, it didn't have to be sealed with a stamp, you could just write something down on whatever you had handy and give it out to mail call and it would get delivered by the postal system."
Washington said even though technology has changed how we communicate with each other and has made it a lot easier for troops to reach loved ones back home, nothing compares to receiving a letter.
"You know, you can't take an email with you on a mission, you can't put that in your flak jacket jacket and carry it around with you and reference it when you're outside the wire," Washington said. "There's something great about being able to do that, having that link, seeing the hand writing of someone that you know and I think that is something that is lost in the rest of our culture a lot. It's one of the last bastions of handwritten letters is for deployed troops."
Mail Call is part of a traveling exhibit prepared by the National Postal Museum and the Smithsonian and will be at the Museum of Texas Tech until July 17th.
