Holiday gifts for troops overseas
Bring the holiday season to soldiers who need a taste of home

By Teri Goldberg
Shopping columnist
MSNBC

Operation Military Service has an " adopt a soldier" program where any interested person can request the name of a military person overseas along with their wish list. Frequently requested items are also listed on the site.

Soldiers' Angels helps fund a variety of programs. The organization not only has mounted an effort to send 140,000 stockings to men and women deployed in Iraq but individual angels also deliver handmade blankets and backpacks filled with goodies to the wounded in combat support hospitals (formerly called MASH units), Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany or any of the stateside hospitals, such as National Naval Center in Bethesda, Md. or Naval Medical Center in San Diego, Calif. " Our mission is to connect American people with the soldiers," says Viktoria Carter from Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, N.C., whose husband was supposed to retire in May 2002 after 22 years in the military and re-enlisted after the attacks on America on Sept. 11, 2001.

To date, Soldiers' Angels has enlisted 16,000 angels. After talking with Carter, who was on her way to comfort a wounded solider and his family at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, my guess is many of the volunteers are truly angels.