Soldiers Deliver the Mail in Eastern Baghdad
CAMP RUSTAMIYAH, Baghdad, Iraq -- Mail. Few things mean more to the deployed Soldier than that little snippet...that little taste of home; from a place 
continents and oceans away, but always close to their heart.
The 19 Soldiers of the 641st Adjutant General Postal Company operating out of Camp Rustamiyah, formerly known as Camp Cuervo, are the guys responsible for trafficking mail to and from the troopers of the 1st Cavalry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team, operating in eastern Baghdad.
"We service all of the 1st BCT," said Rochester, N.Y. native Spc. Brian Saladin, a postal operations and supply clerk with the 641st.
"There are 41 units in the 1st BCT that we support," he added, "but we also carry the mail for the [Military Police unit that operates out of the base camp] and the [Kellogg, Brown and Root] employees."
The New York-based, Army Reserve unit starts its day at 6 a.m., unloading the newly arrived mail.
"A KBR truck will arrive at oh-dark-thirty in the morning, and we'll begin downloading the mail at zero-six," said Staff Sgt. Louis Musilli, the postal unit’s custodian of postal effects, which means that he is "basically the guy who signs for all of the stamps and money orders."
Musilli said the amount of mail the unit receives varies on an almost daily basis.
"When the brigade's mail arrives, it comes inside of tri-wall boxes," he said, "and a truck can carry twenty of these.
"On average, we get 20 tri-walls of mail," he continued, "but we've had as many as sixty tri-walls of mail, or three truckloads."
After unloading the mail truck -- or trucks -- the unit then sorts the mail.
"We sort all mail down to the company level," Saladin said.
"After it's all sorted, it's usually up to the brigade's different [forward
operating bases] to send a...convoy to pick up their mail," Musilli added.
Receiving incoming mail is only half of the job
for these postal Soldiers.
"There are two components [to] our unit," Saladin explained, “Receiving and sorting incoming mail [is] one, and the other is handling outgoing mail from the Soldiers."
The unit has a post office at Camp Rustamiyah, open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., where Soldiers can come and mail out letters and packages.
However, since coming all of the way to the camp isn't exactly convenient for the great majority of the Soldiers who live at the two other base camps in eastern Baghdad -- Camps Hope and Patriot -- the 641st does what they call "rodeos."
"A rodeo is where a few of us will go to another [forward operating base] every couple of weeks for three or four days at a time and set-up a make-shift post office so that the Soldiers there can send mail out," said Buffalo, N.Y. native Sgt. Justin Selak, an operations sergeant with the unit.
"We rotate everybody through that job, so it doesn't fall on just a few people," Musilli added.
The 641st will continue to deliver the mail in eastern Baghdad until February. Not that they’re counting the days.
"The magic date we've been told is Feb. 21," Musilli said.
