Holiday Mail in Afghanistan

Posted on the Military News Network website is footage of service members volunteering at a post office in Afghanistan to sort through more than 200,000 pounds of holiday mail destined for the troops.

Produced by Marine Staff Sgt. Clinton Firstbrook, it drew some angry responses from former USPS and military personnel.

One retired first sergeant of a military postal unit wrote, "I can't believe what I just saw on this video. First I would like to say I am sorry to the mailers and to the soldiers receiving these packages for the way their packages were handled. This is not the way I was trained nor the way I trained other soldiers to process packages. Being in a war zone is no excuse for these soldiers behavior. This is certainly not the way we handled packages in OJE. Some of the packages did look poorly prepared & too large, but there are ways to handle these packages to prevent damage. I can just imagine all the insured damaged items having a claim filed on them to make the USPS pay for repair or replacement when the damage was done by these soldiers. This unit needs to be shut down until they are retrained in the proper way of mail processing. Whoever is in charge of this unit should be releived of duty, including officers and nco's and removed from the unit."

Lesson learned - pack your packages to overseas military personnel EXTREMELY well!

To view the video, click here.