Marine Sgt. Kamm Davis was standing with his body sticking out of a light-armored vehicle as it drove toward Baghdad at the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003. Suddenly the vehicle swerved and turned over. “Thirty-thousand pounds of steel rolled on top of me,” he said. “I thought, ‘I’m dead.’ But I lived. My helmet and body armor protected my vital organs.”
Davis suffered extensive injuries and was eventually flown home, but not before receiving the Purple Heart. Later, after being honorably discharged, Davis began a career with the Postal Service, where he’s one of almost 100,000 veterans who work for USPS.
Davis, a retail associate at the St. George, UT, Post Office, brings to the job firsthand knowledge of the power of mail.
“A letter from home is huge,” he said. “You read them 50 times. You tuck them in your pocket just to have them close to you. To get something from home — a letter, a picture or a crumbled up dry cookie — it’s absolutely priceless.”
Little things matter most to veterans, Davis said.
“When somebody says, ‘Thanks for your service,’ it means a lot,” he said with tears in his eyes. “I never forget that I’m one of the lucky ones.”