A Military Christmas Story

by Colonel Jim Reed

A MILITARY CHRISTMAS STORY

There once was a small Air Defense Command (ADC) site in rural northern Michigan near the town of Oscoda. Primarily a sportsman’s paradise and well-known for hunting and fishing, the area was on the shores of Lake Huron and included the Au Sable River, famous for its trout and steelhead fishing.  Then came a big change.  The tiny Air Defense Command (ADC) site with an F-101 squadron was selected to become the location for a major Strategic Air Command (SAC) base, Wurtsmith Air Force Base.

The base gained a SAC Bomb Wing, which included B-52 bombers and a squadron of KC-135 tankers, and all their maintenance and support facilities.  The construction included a wing headquarters building, squadron buildings, maintenance facilities, an alert building, runway and taxiway improvements and ramp space for the many large multi-engine aircraft that would call this location “home”.

And there was more – an entire small town emerged with the new Capehart housing, new clubs, new water tower and sewage treatment plants, a larger commissary and separate BX building.  All the accouterments of a major military operation!  Except one.

There were no changes made in the small ADC-base sized 2-man Post Office.

In the summer of 1960, the Bomb Wing, its aircraft and crews, arrived.  The Capehart housing was completed, and many new families began living on-base.

As Christmas approached, the 2-man post office realized it had a problem.  There was more incoming mail than they could handle, and regulations didn’t allow volunteers to help handle post office mailing problems.  So, the two people operating the mail system did the best they could.

When incoming mail arrived, they would sort out the packages from the letters to ensure the packages were delivered on time.  Then they’d sort out the letters from the obvious advertising and put the advertisements addressed to “Occupant” out for delivery.  With that sorted out, they would start to sort the incoming letters for delivery.

By early November it became apparent they could not handle the expected Christmas mail rush.  The two of them would sort for as long as possible and stack the remaining letters in a pile for later work.  The next day, if possible, they’d work on the pile of unsorted letters, but what usually happened is that they had additional unsorted letters which were simply added to the top of the work pile.

That stack of unsorted mail got larger as the Christmas season approached, and eventually the incoming volume reached the point where they couldn’t even sort out all the incoming packages, so the Christmas holiday came – and went – with some of the presents still sitting unopened in the crowded two-room post office facility.

After Christmas, the incoming mail became lighter and after a few days the 2-man crew was able to start working on the huge stack of unsorted mail.  They worked their way from the top down, so in early January Wurtsmith residents started receiving some letters with mid-December postmarks.  As the crew worked down through the pile, earlier letters were sorted out and by late February, most of the November mail was delivered.  In March 1961 they finally reached the bottom of the stack and the residents started receiving letters that had been mailed in late October or early November 1960.

So, if you’re missing a piece of incoming mail, just wait a bit longer.  Perhaps it’ll show up next month.  I’m sure there’s a motto for this story, but I’ll be darned if I know what it is.