Free Republic

WASHINGTON — Americans responded almost immediately to early reports that wounded U.S. soldiers in Germany needed clothing, but now the facility as well as the Army hospital in Washington, D.C., are urging donors to hold off for a while. “It seems like every city had a clothes drive for our soldiers,” said Marie Shaw, public affairs officer at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center (search) in Germany, which has tended to more than 18,000 servicemen and women wounded in Iraq since the beginning of operations there in March 2003. "We received tons of things over the holidays — we now have a...

At least two Washington members of FreeRepublic (http://www.FreeRepublic.com) joined other Pacific Northwesterners in the latest of ongoing rallies to Support Our Troops. The third or fourth such held in the central traffic point of the bucolic town of Duvall, Washington (east of Woodinville, in turn east of Seattle), turnout was reduced from the 200+ who showed up in previous weeks by the return of the drizzle for which Seattle is so justly famous. But the weather didn't dampen spirits any, as the photos here will show.