How did you stay in touch with loved ones while you were deployed? Did you look forward those conversations?

Its good to see that troops in current times do have ways to communicate that We didn't when I served in Viet Nam, letters was the only way to keep in touch then. My Mom had kept every letter I sent the entire time I was stationed in the Republic of Viet Nam in 1968-69. We had to write the word Free in the upper right hand corner where a stamp would have been and there was no cost to mail a letter home. My return address was an APO anyway.

Story for you.

My second deployment, I was in Afghanistan. A few weeks after boots on ground, my daughter was born, and Skype was my best friend. I called every chance I got and watched her grow to be almost a year old through the slightly fuzzy video courtesy of a shaky internet connection that linked two machines thousands of miles apart.

I'm not saying it was the ideal situation, but I would have missed so much more had I not taken advantage of it when I could.

Long story short: Do anything and everything to stay apart of their world. Letters, Skype, Phone, carrier pigeon, doesn't matter. You'll be glad you did.

My first deployment to Iraq was mostly letters, with a few scattered calls on a satellite phone. Late in the game we got a little internet cafe set up, and we considered ourselves spoiled at that point.
The second time around I still wrote letters, although we had access to internet and phones.
Contact with those back home made deployment more bearable without a doubt, and also reaffirmed just how lucky I/we have it back in our regular lives.