Two types of Thank You, and the mysteriously late Christmas parcels.

The generic non-denominational non-event response.

It’s great to hear back from the front, of course. But when my first and second replies consisted only of this, I began to wonder if the military bigwigs had taken a new step in their campaign to make the ADF seem cute and cuddly – and not at all connected to anything like, you know, fighting and (oh dear!) killing.

Kindergarten blocks in pretty colours. FFS.

What a relief it was to get some real-people thank you’s.

Dear Greg,

I wish to thank you for your very generous ‘scrounger’s special’ Christmas parcel. The contents you thoughtfully place in the parcel have been very well received…

Well, I must say that Christmas is now but a distant memory – notwithstanding that, I only received your parcel earlier this week!

That letter was dated  6 February. I posted those parcels in late November; that’s the deadline from the DoD for delivery by Christmas. Quite the puzzle. But the next letter – ‘From A Grateful Aussie Soldier’ – offered some explanation.

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR LOVELY LOVELY PARCEL. It’s  wet and snowy here in Kabul and the C130s struggle a little bit so the first thing that gets dumped off the aircraft is the post!So we are only slowly getting our parcels now!

We all got parcels at the same time and sat in a big circle trading our goodies… As a Navy female member I traded your pin up calendar for a packet of short bread biccies (I hope you don’t mind!)

Not at all, Australian Medical Team Member in Kabul. I would expect though that it was a damn big packet of the best quality short breads!

My last reply came from another medical support member. Captain Paul wrote:

It’s been a cold and bleak couple of months here  in Afghanistan with snow and ice making a bunch of Aussies long for home. It’s been a real boost to get some home comforts.  We’ve split things up among our team so everyone’s got something.

For some reason I see the Pin Ups For Vets calendar being doled out one month per man.  And oh, the haggling! “I’ll trade you a keep cup and a post-it note pad for Miss January!”

Santa and his Digger Elves.

And soon enough it’ll be time to do it all again.