As a pen pal for a KIA U.S solider, I have always wondered if I sent him what he wanted
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I was an officer in the National Junior Honor Society in school. I was paired with a solider in Irag. I sent him boxes filled with goodies and treats. We exchanged letters for years. Every time I went to the store I spent the money I made from babysitting on gifts for him and shipping costs (it cost around $60 to ship each of my boxes to him.) Then one day one of the boxes I sent to him to Iraq came back to me as return to sender. Within a couple days I received a letter written by him to me. I was a bit confused as to why the box would come back to me when I knew he had gotten all my previous boxes and had previously shared the boxes with the men he worked with. Soon the news came to me that he had been killed in an IED attack. The box had been automatically returned to sender and the letter had continued on it's path to me. I couldn't believe it. The man who had been a father to me more than my own dad. The man who was a father to three kids and a husband to an amazing woman was gone. My pen pal/substitute father/head of his battalion was gone. I sat in my room at 12 yeas old with a box of goodies meant for him. I cried and begged God to bring him back to his family. I read his last letter to me over and over. He wrote about how he had been driving the Humvee and how it was so hot. He mentioned his family and how he hoped I was doing well in school and that he was proud of me for making officer in my group. Yet he was blown up in the middle of no where. I struggled with this for so long. The full box of goodies sat in my room for years through high school and his letters and pictures sat in my dresser. I struggled to understand how such a good man could be taken. I have never understood it and never will. Nor will I ever feel the pain his family felt upon his loss. I have always hoped the stuff I sent him wasn't just a bunch of middle school shit and was something he could use or enjoy. I still have his letters and pictures he sent me. I hope its not hot out there anymore.
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