Bringing a Taste of Home to Soldiers Fighting in Afghanistan

From simple hellos to care packages, messages from home greet soldiers.

ByABC News via logo
October 5, 2009, 10:30 PM

Oct. 6, 2009— -- Three female U.S. soldiers whose loved ones back home miss them very much are getting a special delivery from "Good Morning America" in Nangarhar, Afghanistan.

The women are married mothers of young children, and their families are eager to reach out to them across the miles.

Although Scotty Brown talks to his wife, U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Christina Brown, once a week via webcam, there's a delay in the transmission. Letters also lag, and they speak by telephone only once a week.

He was happy to be able to send his wife, who is on her second deployment to Afghanistan in the past three years, something in the interim.

Among other things, she's getting video of her husband and their 19-month-old son, Dakota, whom she hasn't seen in six months. In the video, Scotty Brown talks to the camera as though he were talking to his wife, and Dakota tells his mother "hi," counts and says the letters of the alphabet -- small things that bring tears to Brown's eyes.

"This is my baby. ... I just wish I was there to see him do this stuff," she said.

Brown is working logistics for the Forward Operating Base Finley-Shields in Nangarhar Province. The seven-year member of the Air Force is expected return home to Georgia in a little more than four months.

Like Brown, Sgt. Daneila Bock is stationed at FOB Finley-Shields. A medic in the Air Force, Bock is deployed with the U.S. Army.

Her husband, Craig Cusick, is sending her oatmeal dark-chocolate chip cookies from his own recipe. See next page for recipe.

He's also sending video of himself and of their sons, Cameron, 7, and Colby, 5, alongside other members of the family.

Bock, who married Cusick three days before she was deployed in early July, misses his wife.

He tries to speak to her every night but says it's difficult not knowing what she is doing or where she is, especially because her missions are top secret.

Bock is due to return to Sacramento in March.