Staying in touch

The first time Nicholas Melchert saw his father on a big screen during a video teleconference, the 3-year-old thought he was seeing his dad through a window and ran out the door to give him a hug.

His father, Jamie, was half a world away in Kuwait, where he was stationed with the 1035th Maintenance Company.

“The room was pretty emotional before that,” said Nicholas’s mother, Brenda. “But then Nicholas kept yelling ‘Daddy, get out of that TV!’ and everyone started crying.”

Video teleconferences let soldiers see their toddlers — who were infants when they shipped out — take their first steps, listen to their kids sing a song they just learned and talk to a spouse face to face, said Joanne Schroeder, who helps arrange teleconferences for the National Guard. Schroeder estimates she has arranged more than a thousand since 2001.

“Whether they last 10 minutes or half an hour, they’re a real morale booster for everyone,” Schroeder said.

Video teleconferences are among the new technologies that have brought soldiers serving overseas closer to home than ever before. During his year-long deployment, Lt. Jamie Melchert and his fellow Missouri Guardsmen relied on webcams, online messaging and e-mail the way soldiers of the last century relied on mail call. Some bring their own laptops, but all troops have access to the Internet in buildings called Morale, Welfare and Recreation Facilities.

But instantaneous communication also means troops must be more careful about what they write, said Col. Paul Monda, the director of information management at the Missouri National Guard.

“Soldiers are briefed constantly on operational security,” Monda said. “We make the assumption that the enemy is monitoring all of our communications.”

If troops give out even the smallest confidential details in e-mails or on blogs, the enemy could piece them together like a jigsaw puzzle, Monda said.

Monda was stationed in Baghdad with the 1138th Engineering Battalion from May 2003 until May 2004. He arrived shortly after the invasion and saw the communication system evolve.

Iraq was in a “primitive state” when he got there, Monda said. Within a month, civilian contractors were erecting cell phone towers. By November, Monda was able to watch his daughter receive a scholarship during halftime of an MU football game through a video teleconference. By the time the 1035th was being sent overseas in 2005, computers were the key source of communication for troops.

The owners and employees of Storagemart, Brenda Melchert’s employer, bought Jamie a laptop as a going-away present. From training in Fort Bliss, Texas, and into Iraq and Kuwait, Melchert used his laptop to store pictures, watch movies and communicate with friends and family in Columbia. After the video teleconference, Brenda bought a set of webcams and sent one to Jamie. On Christmas and birthdays, he was able watch his children open their presents on his computer.

“You can never really appreciate the Internet until you’re in a concrete bunker in the Iraqi desert sending an e-mail to your daughter’s teacher,” Melchert said.

The computer made his separation from his wife and children — Haley, 6, and Nicholas, now 4 — a little easier.

“Being able to talk to us and see us as much as he did saved Jamie’s life,” Brenda Melchert said.

The 1035th’s mission was getting supplies to units, repairing damaged vehicles and later preparing vehicles for their return to the United States.

“It wasn’t glamorous work,” Jamie Melchert said. “But it was what we were trained to do, and we were glad to be doing it.”

Aside from pick-up soccer games and 5K runs that took place on every holiday, there was little to do when off duty. Laptops quickly grew in popularity. By the time the unit returned home, Melchert estimated that around 80 percent of the soldiers had bought laptops.

“Soldiers need things to pass the time and everything had to be portable in case we were transferred,” Jamie said.

Part of their draw was the built-in DVD players, Melchert said. Watching films together and swapping bootlegged movies became part of the nightly ritual.

Melchert recalled a particular soldier, Vernon Huhmann, who sat on his bunk every night before lights out staring intently at his computer screen. Once, some of the other Guardsmen asked Huhmann if he’d like to watch a DVD with them.

“I don’t watch movies,” he told them.

It turned out that Huhmann was looking at a slideshow of pictures of his farm, family and friends that his wife had sent.

Online shopping — this war’s version of the canteen or care package — has also brought soldiers closer to home. When the 1035th arrived in the Middle East, they found they could get just about anything they wanted online. Delivery took about a week, but Melchert bought himself books, video games and DVDs. Once a month, he sent each of his kids a present from Toysrus.com. When his wife sounded like she was having a bad day, he sent her flowers.

He also stayed in touch with the news from home via the Internet. Melchert remembers telling his wife about the sinkhole in the parking lot of the Wal-Mart on Stadium last summer. Thousands of miles away, he knew about it first.

Reading the news also meant soldiers knew about the protests and debate about the war back home. But it wasn’t something they thought about too much, Melchert said.

“When you’re in a combat zone, none of that fazes you,” Melchert said. “You’re there to do a job.”