Maryland to Mosul in five days

U.S. Army postal personnel at Camp Mosul loaded Christmas trees in a sea-land container for delivery to other bases in Iraq. Photo courtesy of Kalita Air.It took just five days for USPS and the Military Postal Service (MPS) to ship 5,000 donated Christmas trees from Maryland to Camp Mosul, Iraq.

The trees were then deliv­ered by MPS in Iraq, in less than a week in most cases.

The shipment — enough to fill 61 pallets in two 53-foot semitrailers — was for the nonprofit organization Opera­tion Christmas Tree.

The journey began in Westminster, MD, as 350 Opera­tion Christmas Tree volunteers prepared and addressed the packages to individual service members. USPS picked them up Dec. 3 and trucked them to Newark, NJ, where they were prepared and loaded on a Boeing 747.

The trees arrived in Bahrain on Dec. 5 and were sorted for Iraq, Afghanistan or Kuwait. Deliveries were reported Dec. 7 in Balad, Iraq, and Dec. 8 in Camp Mosul.

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