Christmas in Afghanistan
The city of San Mateo’s Adopted Sons of Alpha Company, 1/327 Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, were deployed to Afghanistan earlier this year after having served three deployments in Iraq.
They will be away from home this holiday season and would welcome a card or letter, or a care package containing items one might pack for an extended camping trip: toiletries; high-energy, compact foods such as protein bars, beef jerky and canned tuna; pillows, bath towels and twin-size sheets; paperback books, music CDs and crossword puzzles; disposable cameras, playing cards and movie DVDs; and much more.
Do not send chocolate or anything containing pork, and bag anything that has a scent, advises City Clerk Norma Gomez, who is the city’s contact to Alpha Company and is organizing the holiday outreach.
The names of the unit members, and platoon and headquarters addresses, are available from her office at City Hall. Call (650) 522-7040 or e-mail ngomez@cityofsanmateo.org.
A letter detailing the appeal is going out to schools, service clubs and Adopted Sons of Alpha Company supporters. The letter is directing donors to bring care-package items to City Hall to be collected and boxed by a committee supporting the effort.
The care packages must be shipped by Nov. 13 in order to arrive in Afghanistan by Christmas.
The city’s bond to Alpha Company dates to Dec. 18, 1967, when a young soldier serving in Vietnam, Sgt. Joe Artavia, was concerned about the lack of mail his unit was receiving. He wrote his sister, Linda Patterson, asking her to work toward getting a city to adopt his unit.
On March 4, 1968, the City Council adopted Alpha Company with the purpose of improving troop morale with messages of love and support from home.
Sgt. Artavia was killed in action less than three weeks later but had learned of the adoption prior to his death and had written his sister that the response had a powerful impact on troop morale.
San Mateo welcomed Alpha Company with a homecoming parade in January 1972 – reputedly the only city in the nation to have honored returning Vietnam troops with such a celebration.
San Mateo’s relationship with Alpha Company is memorialized in a permanent display on the third floor of the city’s main library.
Gomez keeps close ties with the unit and recently visited with the troops at company headquarters at Fort Campbell, Ky.
“They’re all so young,” she said.
From November 5, 2010 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
