The Hyperborean Wanderer called his mom to wish her a happy Mothers Day today. The connection was as clear as a local call, with only a slight delay as the signal bounced across the ocean off a sattelite. She was thrilled to hear from him and they had a lengthy and happy conversation. I was proud of him. It made her day; she had heard from the other four today...gotten flowers and cards and little drawings from loving grandkids, calls from Texas and hugs galore. But the Wanderer's call was special because, in case you were unaware, he is well into his third tour in Iraq. He even managed to send flowers via the internet. All this from a war zone that may not be as hot as it once was, but is still a scary place to hang your hat. Through the marvels of modern tech, he has regular calls and computer links with his family. Vid links even. I think that is wonderful.

When the Chief sailed off to WWII on the USS California, Mudder (our tag for Grandma Stone...established by my brother) had to rely on letters from the Pacific that could take months to reach her. She had no idea where he was, she didn't know he had been transferred to a destroyer, the Lansdowne, or which area he was even in. The letters would come sporadically, sometimes weeks without one, somedays five or six at once. This was the norm for WWII. Letters from sailors on a small ship would be gathered up and sent over to a larger ship which would take them to a service ship which would eventually wind up in Pearl or San Diego or Frisco where the letters would then be sent onward. So the parents or sisters or brothers or wives or lovers of servicemen would just have to wait. They would see newsreels about what battles were being waged (newsreels were only a few weeks behind) and what ships or units were involved. The only really fast communication came by telegram and the folks back home did not want to receive those.

When I was in Vietnam, I was extremely fortunate to be able to get a phone call to my folks in San Diego. Twice, in fact. I worked for the 593rd Signal Company, we provided in-country phone service for the Saigon-Cholon-Bien Hoa area with extended service to some of the outlying base camps like Long Binh and Di An. Service was provided by old fashioned switchboards, manned by GI operators who pulled wires and plugged them into the holes just like in the ancient movies. My job had nothing to do with any of that technical stuff; I was a driver. I delivered messages from one switchboard to another all over the service area. I don't know what kind of messages; they were classified and I wasn't. So every day I drove all over the area from switchboard to switchboard to message center to headquarters. But I digress.

Several of my buddies were operators or repair types. When the ROK (Republic of Korea) troops arrived in country, we set up their phone systems for them. They had a link to Korea and Korean switchboards could get a link to the Philipines and that allowed a link to Hawaii which made it possible to tap into lines to San Francisco and once you could hook into the civilian system in California, the operators would fall all over themselves to help a GI get a connection to his home. This process was slow, and the initial part required that you find a Korean operator who spoke English...fortunately most did. So after a lot of yelling, "Yapasayo" (I think it means "Kimo Sabe" in Korean) and begging and shifting all over the Pacific, we were hooked up to the Chief's house and got to talk to mom. The connections faded in and out, sometimes just fell apart and drifted away, and sometimes were so weak you could barely hear anything but some other GI yelling, "Yapasayo" on an adjacent line. But for the time, it was magic...a phone call over 10,000 miles of ocean...wow.

In 1977 I went to Stuttgart and left my family in California awaiting orders to come join me. On a couple of occasions MamaCharlie and I were able to use the military "Autovon" system to talk to each other about coordination between us for getting them shipped. It was a satellite system that sometimes had such an echo and delay you could hardly keep track of what you were saying...but it was free. You could use a civilian line and call home...short calls would run big bucks.

When I arrived in Saudi Arabia for DESERT SHIELD, they hadn't set up any telephone systems yet. We couldn't find the place the Air Force made their calls from, either, but I did find an FTD office at the airport so I sent MamaCharlie a bouquet with an attached card that told her we had arrived safely, were sleeping on the pier in Dammam waiting for the ship that had our trucks on it to arrive, and that we would be calling as soon as we figured out how. It was more than a week before we found out where the phone tents were set up. Then we could make a couple calls a month.

This isn't really a "sour grapes" piece. I am really happy that Matt and Dana get to talk regularly and that the kids get to see their dad on the computer now and then. I wish he could be home and do all that in person. This is just my way of saluting modern technology on a personal basis.