It is the ever-popular military mail, and like so much that transits Iraq, it follows a perilous path.

First, the transport planes make a tricky, corkscrew approach to Baghdad International to stay out of reach of insurgent missiles. At a warehouse near the runway, mail is sorted and aimed at about a dozen regional postal facilities across Iraq.

Then it goes on trucks and into convoys fanning out across this country, where 140,000 U.S. military personnel eagerly await.

Convoys are often attacked, a fact that has the military making plans to fly more mail to bases.

"Flying more mail means fewer people on the road," says Lt. Col. Marybel Johnson of Cary, whose N.C. Army National Guard unit oversees the sorting operation in Baghdad.

Flying also speeds delivery, an issue in military mail. In 2004, a U.S. General Accounting Office study found problems in postal operations for Operation Iraqi Freedom ranging from inadequately trained clerks to prolonged delays in delivery.

Johnson, a West Point graduate and former helicopter pilot, says the military is always reviewing its mail strategy, and delays continue to shrink.

On the frontier

One address seeing a welcome increase in the pace of deliveries is Camp Q West, a remote supply and logistics hub in western Iraq near the Syrian border."Mail is the greatest morale booster," says Capt. Tim Gale, who is stationed at Q West. Until last month, shipments were coming in every seven to 10 days. Now deliveries are arriving every three days.

Despite the availability of e-mail, letters and packages from home continue to be popular. For one thing, you can't e-mail homemade cookies. For another, mail provides a personal, tactile connection with home.

"Soldiers love mail," says Gale. "My guys get a lot of mail."

Catching contraband

Sometimes the mail is the vehicle for the forbidden.

Lt. Agata Tyson of Pittsboro, who works at Baghdad International Airport, said screening packages for contraband isn't part of the mission. But sometimes, she says, boxes rat themselves out in sorting.

"A lot of times we get a package that's wet and smells like alcohol. We open those and take it out."

Alcohol is forbidden among U.S. forces in the region and is considered a serious offense.

After the booze is removed, a note goes in the package explaining the violation. Such breaches create another piece of paperwork, too, Tyson says.

"We take a picture of it and send it to their commander."

Other postal patrons

About a dozen letters arrive at the Baghdad sorting center each week for Iraq's best-known resident, although his address is a military secret."We get a lot of mail for Saddam," says First Sgt. Bill Lynch of Morrisville, near Raleigh. "One came in the other day that said, `Saddam or One of His Allies.' "

Hussein's mail is turned over to the Air Force. Lynch doesn't know where it goes after that.

Along the route

The U.S. military has been delivering mail to soldiers since the Revolutionary War, a conflict in part based on postage rates set by England. Today, soldiers in the war zone can send letters home for free, no postage necessary.

Some mail destined for Iraq passes through Germany. Sgt. Wes Smith of Dillon, S.C., presides over operations at the biggest post office in the Air Force, at Ramstein Air Force Base, and expedites boxes bound for Iraq.

"The care packages come through," he says. "We get to see a lot of joy being spread."

Military mail is a fascinating business, says Tech. Sgt. Jason Simpson of Cartersville, Ga., who also works at Ramstein.

He was once assigned to the United Arab Emirates, where he was the only military postmaster.

"I was the most popular guy in town," he says. "Once I got a call at 3 a.m. asking about a package."

Sometimes, military mail movers aren't so popular, particularly when they discover outlawed souvenirs being sent back from the war zone.

"Knives, swords, people do it," Simpson says. "One guy even sent M16 bullets."

With Our Soldiers

Observer reporter Mark Washburn and Macon (Ga.) Telegraph photographer Nick Oza, both of Knight Ridder newspapers, traveled with an N.C. National Guard unit to Iraq.

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