USPS: Follow guidelines

BILOXI, Miss. — No one can fault the sentiment behind sending a holiday card to “A Recovering American Soldier.” But don’t do it.

The card or package will be returned to you because the U.S. Postal Service has rules about anonymous mail for the military. Thanks to the Red Cross and Pitney Bowes, however, you can address your greeting card to “Holiday Mail for Heroes” and your appreciative message will get to an active duty or armed forces veteran.

“Heroes” is a legitimate program sponsored by the American Red Cross and Pitney Bowes, and your holiday greetings will be delivered. But before addressing your card, perhaps you’d like to know the story behind “A Recovering American Soldier.”

For the second year, a well-intended but incorrect e-mail is making the rounds suggesting “when doing your Christmas cards this year, take one card and send it to this address: A Recovering American Soldier c/o Walter Reed Army Medical Center.”

The address supplied is a street number for Walter Reed in Maryland, where many wounded from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are treated. Even if anonymous mail to soldiers weren’t illegal, the medical center doesn’t have the staff to handle all the American goodwill.

“We don’t know how the e-mail got out last year or how it got out again this year,” Army Spc. Jared Larive told the Sun Herald this week. His response is to send people to redcross.org/holidaymail to read how to address it correctly, and even to download a card.

Red Cross has teamed with Pitney Bowes — that’s the company that brings us postage machines for the “Holiday Mail for Heroes” initiative. A similar 2007 effort, which didn’t receive this publicity and was up against the incorrect “Unknown Soldier” e-mail, still garnered 600,000 delivered cards.

So this year they’ve expanded it to include the entire military family, active duty and veterans, and they’ve set a goal of 1 million cards.

“This season of giving doesn’t mean it has to be something material, and that’s what these one million cards are about,” said Paige Roberts, executive director of the Red Cross Southeast Mississippi chapter.