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February 16, 2011 By James Dao

KUNDUZ, Afghanistan — Forget the drones, laser-guided bombs and eye-popping satellite imagery. For the average soldier, the most significant change to modern warfare might just boil down to instant chatting.

Consider these scenes from northern Afghanistan:

A gunner inside an armored vehicle types furiously on a BlackBerry, so engrossed in text-messaging his girlfriend in the United States that he has forgotten to watch for enemy movement.

A medic watches her computer screen with something approaching rapture as her 2-year-old son in Florida scrambles in and out of view before planting wet kisses on the camera lens, 7,500 miles away.

A squad leader who has just finished directing gunfire against insurgents finds a quiet place inside his combat outpost, whips out his iPhone and dashes off an instant message to his wife back home. “All is well,” he tells her, adding, “It’s been busy.”

The communication gap that once kept troops from staying looped into the joyful, depressing, prosaic or sordid details of home life has all but disappeared. With advances in cellular technology, wider Internet access and the infectious use of social networking sites like Facebook, troops in combat zones can now communicate with home nearly around the clock. They can partake in births and birthdays in real time. They can check sports scores, take online college courses and even manage businesses and stock portfolios. But there is a drawback: they can no longer tune out problems like faulty dishwashers and unpaid electric bills, wayward children and failing relationships, as they once could.

The Pentagon, which for years resisted allowing unfettered Internet access on military computers because of cyber-security concerns, has now embraced the revolution, saying instant communication is a huge morale boost for troops and their families. But military officials quietly acknowledge a downside to the connectivity.

Some commanders worry that troops are playing with iPhones and BlackBerrys (as well as Game Boys and MP3 players) when they should be working, though such devices are strictly forbidden on foot patrols. More common are concerns that the problems of home are seeping inexorably into frontline life, creating distractions for people who should be focusing on staying safe.

“It’s powerful for good, but it can also be powerful for bad when you’re hearing near real time about problems at home,” said Col. Chris Philbrick, director of the Army’s suicide prevention task force. “It forces you to literally keep your head in two games at one time when your head should be in just one game, in Iraq or Afghanistan.”

It took the military several years to come to terms with both the cyber-security and safety issues. Initially, the Pentagon banned access to social networking sites. But when officials realized that they were falling behind the times and angering young Web-savvy troops, they conducted a study and determined there was more to be gained by allowing access. Classified-network computers still have no access to social networking sites.

To see the upside of a well-connected force, one need look no further than the Morale, Welfare and Recreation building, fondly known as the M.W.R., at Forward Operating Base Kunduz, home to the First Battalion, 87th Infantry for the past year. In more than 40 plywood cubicles that are available all day, soldiers sit in front of computer terminals or talk on telephones, all of them connected to home. There is virtually no privacy, so the arguments over money and children, the love talk and baby talk, are clearly audible in one cacophonous symphony of chat.

Pfc. Briana Smith, 23, medic and bubbly single mother, is regularly in the M.W.R. checking up on her 2-year-old son, Daniel, who is living with her parents in Tampa. She tries to call home daily and routinely logs onto Facebook to check in with family and friends. And at least once a week, she uses video conferencing on Skype to visit with Daniel. The close communication thrills her, but can leave a pang, too. “I can’t be involved in the everyday things,” she said. “I only get to see the little tidbits of his life. It’s good to see, but it’s a little heartbreaking at times.”

The Internet connections and phones are not all free. Though troops do not pay to use computers in the M.W.R., they do pay for the phone calls. And those soldiers who bring their own cellphones pay fees that typically start at $70 and frequently run as high as $300 a month. A few chatty soldiers have received bills for more than $10,000 when their texting spun out of control.

To veterans from previous generations, it all seems like something out of science fiction. George Moody, whose son, Billy, is a gunner with the battalion in Kunduz, spent 25 years in the Navy, deploying on ships that were at sea for months at a time. Letters home to his girlfriend and now wife, Mary Jo, sometimes took six weeks to arrive. Now Mr. Moody, 49, has the family computer programmed to play reveille as loudly as possible whenever Billy logs onto Skype in Kunduz. With an eight-and-a-half-hour difference between Afghanistan and their home in Ashville, N.C., he and his wife are waking after midnight almost every day. “It’s like having a baby again, because we’re back to getting up at 1:30, 2 in the morning to talk to him,” Mr. Moody said. “But we could not live with ourselves if we could not talk to him when he wanted to talk.”

The easy communication can relieve fears — but also stoke them. Once families become used to hearing from troops daily, lapses in communication can send imaginations racing.Christina Narewski communicates daily with her husband, Staff Sgt. Francisco Narewski, by Skype or instant messaging on their BlackBerrys. But when he does not call back quickly, she frets. “It’s an anxiety just waiting to hear from him again, just waiting to hear when he gets back,” she said.

Barbara Van Dahlen Romberg, a psychologist and founder of a group, Give an Hour, that provides counseling to troops and their families, called the connectivity “a mixed blessing” when couples spend too much time waiting for calls or excessively discussing problems that cannot be repaired long distance. “It’s just stress, stress, stress,” she said. “I talked to a mom who was counting the minutes between calls from her son. I gently told her that may not be good for either one of them. It is a burden.” The ability to keep tabs on people at almost any hour can also be dangerous for soldiers suspicious of their lovers or spouses. “It’s nothing to go ask your friend: ‘What was she doing last night?’ ” Pfc. Billy Moody said. “They might tell you one thing, she tells you another, and the next thing you know, there’s drama.”

Specialist Kyle Schulz, for instance, learned via cellphone that his girlfriend was taking up with another man. The news sent him into an emotional tailspin — until he rekindled his relationship with an old girlfriend, by cellphone and Facebook. They later discussed marriage, also on Facebook, until that relationship, too, flickered out. “In a way I kind of think I had too much communication,” Specialist Schulz, 22, said, “because the more I know back home about what’s going on, the less that I am concentrating out here. And it could potentially hurt me or other people.”

In extreme cases, breakups over cellphones or Facebook have sent soldiers to suicide counseling, or worse. In one case involving a different battalion, a soldier in Iraq killed himself in 2009 after spending hours tracking his girlfriend’s movements and then arguing with her and her sister via cellphone and MySpace.

Half an hour after the soldier, Chancellor Keesling, shot himself, his girlfriend sent him an e-mail asking to make u“. Chance knew exactly who his girlfriend had gone out with and where she was,” said his father, Gregg Keesling. “She stopped taking his calls, and that is what really sent him into the spiral.”In Kunduz, the battalion chaplain, Capt. Tony Hampton, said he often advises soldiers to shut off the phone and stay away from the computers when tensions are brewing with loved ones back home. Take some time to think, he counsels. Write a letter. He doubts anyone listens.

“The access is too easy for them and they just can’t rest,” he said. “This is the microwave generation. They need it, and they need it fast.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/us/17soldiers.html?_r=1&hp

February 14, 2011

When Love Meant Letters By Lisa Belkin

Illustration by Barry Falls

Technology

Speaking of love and the Army, there is an exhibit at the National Army Museum in London chronicling the letters exchanged between soldiers in battle and those they left at home. The hundreds of pages — some from as far back as 200 years ago — capture a longing and a loneliness that will sound familiar even to modern lovers who close the distance with tools like Skype.

One letter in the exhibit speaks to the particular pain of separation on parents. On April 27, 1902, the wife of Sgt.  Louis Jones penned two densely scripted pages to her husband, who was fighting in Gibraltar. Her subject was their 3-year-old son, Teddy.

She wrote:

My own dear Loo,

I expect you will think something dreadful [h]as happened by me not writing again to you, I have not had the heart to write and tell you the sad news of our own dear little son. I am very very grieved to tell you dear our poor Teddy Died Wednesday morning at half past 6 it seems a cruel shame to think the dear little Chap should be taken from us just as he had got such a dear little fellow. It [h]as almost been the death of me. I can’t put down how I feel for I loved the Lad better than my own life. I would have willing died if I could have saved my dear lad. He was only ill a fortnight and the first Week was not so very ill in fact we all thought he had got the turn for the best till Saturday Week then convulsions fits set on and the poor little Chap was unconsious [sic] from Saturday morning till Wednesday morn he died. I shall never forget the dear lad if I lived to be hundred. He did die hard I sat beside him from Saturday till Wednesday it seemed dreadful and the poor lad had been looking forward to seeing his dad. His complaint was comsomsion[sic] of the brain but you know our poor Ted [h]as always suffered with his head. It does seem hard for me and you away so far. I know it will be a dreadful blow to you. I suppose you got the telegram dear last Sunday night you would guess it was serious by me sending you that. I was hoping they would let you come Home for I should have loved you to have seen him and have been able to come to the funeral. We are going to buried the dear little Chap on Tuesday at Lodge Hill Cemetery. I don’t know what I shall do for it feels like one in a dream and I can hardly think it my Ted now that he’s dead. He [h]as grown and got on well lately, we have measured the coffin it is 47 inches long so that will tell you how tall he had got. I must tell you more in the next letter as I feel so bad tonight. This is the worst blow of all for us dear. Percy is pretty well I am pleased to say. I hope this letter will find you well dear so good night with fondest love to you I remain as ever your loving Wife.

Now, lest you get too misty, you should know that Mrs. Jones went on to make it clear to her husband that his family had been of no help at all, while hers had come through magnificently. Even in her grief (because of it, perhaps) she also made sure he knew she expected him home right quick, because she was running out of money.

As she added in a postscript:

I forgot to say Nelly wrote to your Mother about Teddy[‘s] death. She knows how I [ ] also [ ] I quite think they are skiney lot of Devils I don’t wonder you not wanting to have any thing more to do with them they are not worth the name of parents Mother or Sisters they are no good to you. I should have sent you a few shillings my self only to tell you the truth I had to borrow 30s off agnes Mrs you see I had to buy new black for my self and Percy, and the funeral was 2.10 and then Minnie paid 10s for the doctor for me. I think our people have all been most good to me, different to your tight lot and I am sure poor dad cried like a child when our dear lad died for he loved him quite as much as we did. Dear Loo I went to the W.house yesterday and the Master asked me how long you would be before you were sent home. He also asked for your address and said he would write to the Captain so I do hope please God they will let you come Home soon or else they will be stopping me the money and I have promised to pay Agnes Mrs 10s a month so I sent her 10d yesterday out of the 30.

You can read more of the letters here.

What will future exhibits say of love (and spousal tension, and feuds within families) now that we express it in e-mail and texts?

http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/14/when-love-meant-letters/?scp=4&sq=love&st=cse

Dear Karin,
 
 
that’s probably the kind of mail you wish you had never received. I guess ,in that case ,the best is to be honest and straightforward. I met a girl in Chengdu and want to be with her, this was totally unexpected, a friend of a friend, the same old story… i really don’t know if writting something else would make things easier so i’ll make it short even if it sounds too harsh. I’ll write you when i’ll be back,
 
i really think of you (even if that’s not in the way you wish me to),

———