Free Desert Fax Takes Families to Front Line

For the families of hundreds of Port Hueneme-based Seabees serving in the Middle East, Operation Desert Fax is making America’s Operation Desert Shield a little more bearable.

That’s Desert Fax--as in facsimile.

It’s a program that allows families and friends to send electronically transmitted messages free to U.S. military personnel in Saudi Arabia.

Julie Maurer, one of the first Navy wives to use Desert Fax in Ventura County, travels daily with her 13-month-old daughter, Elizabeth, from their home in Oxnard to the AT&T; Phone Center in Ventura’s Buenaventura Mall.

There, on a one-page form, Maurer writes a brief letter to her husband, Lawrence, one of 560 Port Hueneme Seabees who have been flown to the Persian Gulf to build airstrips and other installations.

AT&T; sends the message, by satellite, microwave or cable, to Saudi Arabia, where it’s delivered by the military mail service within 48 hours.

“That’s fast,” said Maurer as she composed a letter on a mall bench the other day. “If you use ordinary mail, it takes at least two weeks to get there.”

Since Desert Fax was launched Sept. 21, AT&T; has sent more than 40,000 free faxes to Americans in the Middle East, according to company spokeswoman Diane Tipton. The program, she said, was proposed by Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), who was concerned by reports that slow mail delivery was lowering troop morale.

Suzanne Crittendon, manager of the Ventura phone center, said that as of midday Wednesday, her store, one of 400 such units throughout the country, had transmitted 203 such messages.

“The vast majority have been sent by Port Hueneme wives, though I think we’ve also transmitted a few to personnel from Point Mugu,” she said. All Seabees ordered to the Middle East so far are men.

On Tuesday, during Maurer’s second visit to the center in two days, she was accompanied by two other Navy wives, Colleen Schul and Heather Jaeger. Schul brought along her son, Lloyd Jr., 2, and daughter, Stephanie, 14 months.

In her first fax, Maurer said, she told her husband that their daughter had started to walk and that his brother, Joey, had just been married.

“I told Larry, ‘We love you and we miss you,’ ” she added.

All three wives said they warned their husbands to take it easy in the Middle Eastern heat.

“We’ve heard it’s 125 degrees in the sun,” said Jaeger, whose husband, William, like Lawrence Maurer and Lloyd Schul Sr., is an equipment operator with Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 40. “We’re worried about their health.”

Maurer said she considered including a photo of herself in a tank top on one of her faxes, but was dissuaded by phone center personnel. “They told me the Saudis screen everything, and that if they saw my shoulders they’d just rip it up.”

But AT&T;’s Tipton said the messages are not subject to censorship by anyone.

Whether her letters to her husband are censored or not, Maurer vowed: “I’m going to send him a fax every day until he comes home.”

Tipton said AT&T; normally charges $3.46 to send a one-page fax message to the Middle East. She said the program, which is costing the company $150,000 a month, will be continued “at least through Christmas.”

Operation Desert Fax doesn’t allow service personnel to send free messages home, Tipton said. She added, however, that for the next two weeks Americans stationed in Saudi Arabia will be able to call home without cost while AT&T; introduces its USADirect phone service in that country.