America’s youth have faced the reality of deployment since the days of the Vietnam War draft lottery. It is a double-edged pain, both for the soldiers who must leave their family and everything familiar for a war-torn foreign land, and for the families who watch them go and worry about them every day and night until they return.

But in today’s Iraq War, deployed Marines and their families can benefit from MotoMail, an online service that takes about 24 hours to get a letter from the loved one’s heart to the deployed soldier’s hand. But with its limitations of access to certain service branches, the ease and speed of this communication service that is a savior to some remains just out of reach to many others.

“When you receive a piece of mail, it eases up our mind a little,” said staff sergeant Robert D. Zabayle, a USMC recruiter who works near SF State. “We’re focused on what we’re doing out there, and there’s nothing good to focus on.”

The website was launched in December 2004, and is based on a similar service that has been used by the British Armed Forces since 1999, according to Don McCarty, a postal affairs officer in the Marine Corps. On June 12 of 2007, the service also added a program called PhotoMail, in which family members can include photos with the letters they send through MotoMail. In 2007 alone, the site has been visited nearly two million times.

Family members can open an account at www.motomail.us for free and create an address book with the addresses of the deployed Marines they wish to contact. After the letter is composed online, it goes through three stages of delivery: the letter is received by the MotoMail server, then downloaded to the MotoMail terminal, and finally printed at the base where the recipient is stationed and hand-delivered to the soldier. The entire process can take as little as two hours, whereas regular mail takes approximately one week to reach Iraq, according to a US Post Office representative.

Zabayle has been deployed to Iraq three times for tours ranging from six to eight months. During his time oversees, the American forces in Iraq had not finished setting up their bases, so he did not have access to a computer and rarely was able to make phone calls. He said that communication from home is the primary motivation that keeps a soldier going.

Zabayle said that MotoMail is probably, “a great ease for young Marines out there.” He said that the Army, Navy, and Air Force have more access to email, so a Marine’s primary ways of communication are letters and standing in line for the one phone call they can make each day.

“At least we know someone is thinking about us,” he said of receiving word from home. “That’s our strength, our family.”

Zabayle had not previously heard of MotoMail, nor had any of the Marines hanging around the recruiting office. Sergeant Randy M. Ranoa, who is also a recruiter, said that those in command on the bases in Iraq are probably informing the deployed Marines of the letter service, and leaving it to those Marines to pass the message on to their families.

MotoMail is also a great relief to families who miss their deployed friends and relatives. The website’s feedback page is strewn with members saying thank you and claiming that MotoMail is, “a blessing to my family.” A woman who describes herself as a “Marine wife” says, “this is amazing, you have no idea how much it truly means to everyone I know who uses it.”

SF State senior Maggie Glenn, 22, agrees that MotoMail is a wonderful service for the families of service men and women. However, the speech and communications major—whose brother is a sergeant first class in the Army—would not be able to use the website if her brother were to be deployed again.

“That would have been such an amazing thing…if that had been available to us,” she said. “That would have made his life a lot easier, to communicate, [and for us to be] able to show our love and support.”

Her brother, Curtis Glenn, 28, was deployed for three year-long tours, once to Kuwait and twice to Iraq. He and his wife, who is also in the Army, currently live in Alabama with their newborn child, who arrived on Halloween of this year. Over 1 million soldiers have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan during the nearly five-year war, and—like all the affected families—Glenn’s family had a difficult time dealing with his deployment.

“It’s definitely really nerve-racking,” Maggie said. “I know my mom was always really nervous about it. It’s constantly in the back of your mind. If you don’t hear from him in a couple days, you wonder if he’s alright. You always wonder where they are because you never really know.”

Glenn said she wishes that MotoMail was available to the other branches of the military outside of the Marine Corps.

“I think that sucks that other branches can’t use it,” she said. “If they’re trying to make it available to the Army and get it up and running, that’s great. The sooner, the better.”