It started with a letter – and ended in a wedding.

Nearly two decades ago, 13-year-old Jaime Benefit wrote a letter addressed to “Any Soldier” during the Persian Gulf War, expressing her support for the troops as they prepared to invade Iraq.

The letter made its way to Pfc. Jeremy Clayton, a 19-year-old soldier from Charleston, S.C., who was serving with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment.

The two became pen pals, writing back and forth about sports, high school and their families.

“Just stuff to keep their minds off of what was going on and keep their spirits up,” said Benefit, 32.

After the war ended, the two stopped writing, but Benefit always wondered what happened to Clayton.

“I’d always kept his letters,” she said. “I had them wrapped in a red-white-and-blue ribbon.”

Earlier this year, she searched his name on Facebook and sent him a short note: “Were you in Desert Storm?”

Clayton, 38, now out of the Army, saw the message and had one reaction: “Shock and awe.”

“I just knew I had to find out what she was doing,” he recalled.

The two agreed to meet in March, and their fate was sealed.

“It took my breath,” Clayton said of seeing his one-time pen pal in the flesh. “I was actually shaking and I’m a pretty strong man. I just said to myself, ‘You have to do whatever you can to make sure you spend the rest of your life with this woman.’”

Clayton proposed not long after, and the two got married July 15 in a simple ceremony on the beach in Charleston.

“It was fate that I got her letter,” he said. “And her finding me 19 years later was fate.”

The Internet may have brought the newlyweds together, but they still rely on good old pen and paper to keep their bond strong.

“She writes me notes every morning and puts them in my lunch,” he said.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2009/08/04/2009-08-04_wartime_penpals_become_gi__wife.html#ixzz0NJlK1zF8

This article posted on USA Today discusses the problem in detail:

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — If military families are quietly “coming apart at the seams,” as the wife of the Army’s top soldier told Congress in June, the evidence is here in the dining room of Army Capt. Mark Flitton and his wife, Lynn.

Their oldest child, Scott, 15, stormed into this room early this year after an argument with his father, asking why his mother ever married “that man.” It was here in March where the couple first discussed divorce.

In July, Mark and Lynn explained at the dining room table how they live together now only on a superficial level, driven apart by back-to-back combat deployments and marking days until he goes back to war in Iraq next year.

“I haven’t come home yet,” admits Mark, 46, who during the past 10 years has spent a cumulative 36 months away in three separate tours. “I’m still in the war mode, and I don’t know that I’m going to come out of it until I know I don’t have any more war rotations to go back on.”

“We’ve just become so comfortable in living separate lives,” says Lynn, 49.

One soldiers request for “The Eddas” peaked her curiosity, as she had never heard of this book before. She didn’t send this book, but in her letter asked about it. This small incident sparked a friendship. Both would write back and forth to each other, learning about the other’s life.

The soldier (his first name is Dennis) returned from Iraq, and about a month later went to visit this woman. Soon after she received an email from Dennis offering her one of his kidneys. She had received offers before from well meaning friends, without follow through, so she was cautious. But after deliberation, Dennis went through with his amazingly generous gift.

This was in 2005, and she proclaims herself healthy thanks to Dennis. He is currently deployed and continues to help with the Books for Soldiers charity. Dennis  shows us that heroes are found anywhere, and they certainly can be found here at home as well as out on the front lines.

The soldiers were moving to the home of one of Iraq’s leading holy men, the Grand Ayatollah Ali Hussein Sistani, seeking his crucial support for their stay in this southern Iraqi city.But as they turned a corner, a group of Iraqi men blocked their way.

Shouting in Arabic, “God is great,” the crowd grew into hundreds, many of whom mistakenly thought the Americans were trying to capture the town’s holy man and attack the Imam Ali Mosque, a holy site for Shiite Muslims around the world. Someone in the crowd lobbed a rock at the troops, then another.

Lt. Col. Chris Hughes, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, showed restraint and intelligence.

He yelled to his troops: “Smile, relax.” Then he commanded his soldiers to take a knee and point their weapons to the ground. Some Iraqis backed off and sat down. But many more continued to yell and block the road.

Lt. Col. Chris Hughes instructs his soldiers to get down on one knee and smile.

“We’re going to withdraw out of this situation and let them defuse it themselves,” he told his troops through a loudspeaker. “All vehicles turn around.”

It is not uncommon for this sort of situation to explode into a cultural confrontation with tragic results. Hughes handled this amazingly well and prevented a dangerous incident. This shows that not all confrontation needs to end in violence.