Yesterday, I got this e-mail from four different people who had no connections (did not know each other), which means this particular e-mail is already making the rounds very quickly this year. The bogus e-mail, though it sounds well intentioned, asks people to send Christmas cards to Walter Reed addressed to "Any Wounded Soldier" or "Any American Soldier".
These cards will not be delivered. For security reasons, the DoD and Walter Reed does not allow letters and packages addressed as such to be delivered to our wounded. They will not even accept them because of the safety issue in handling them. Also, they are trying to keep the wounded soldiers from getting hate mail.
Two of the organizations that I am a member of, The American Legion and the 75th Ranger Regiment Association, sent out notices last year asking us to educate the general public about this. Looks like I will be getting the same notices once again.
Instead of going into details, I am providing at couple of links to explain the misinformation:
Link 1Link 2The Red Cross "Holiday Mail for Heros" is a project that the 75th RRA, VFW, and American Legion has worked with in the past and I encourage everybody that wants to participate to use that means to get your cards to our wounded men and women.
Red Cross link