PX offers taste of home for holidays

BAGHDAD -- The customers may be thousands of miles away from their homes and families in America, but on US military bases in Iraq the holiday shopping season has arrived, and business is booming.

Even in Iraq, the PX serves as a modern department store, its aisles filled with CDs, DVDs, televisions, energy bars, magazines, fancy chocolates and cookies, paperback books, Christmas lights, and coveted bags of Starbucks coffee, with prices up to 20 percent below retail.

Managers of the spacious PX at Camp Falcon in southern Baghdad have put up holiday posters and pump in music to give soldiers a taste of life back home.

"We've set up a little Christmas tree with giveaway prizes," says Charles Riggs of Fort Lewis, Wash., a store manager wearing a Santa hat. "We're just being as cheerful as possible. We know we're thousands of miles from home. But it's still Christmas."

Shopping at the PX is one of the ways soldiers get into the Christmas spirit. Sales at this PX have increased 100 percent during the holidays, from $15,000 a day to $32,000, says Michael Cafferty, manager of the PX.

A company called the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, or AAFES, runs all 12,000 PXes -- as well as armed forces fast-food outlets, movie theaters, gas stations, and hair salons -- on US Army and Air Force bases in 35 countries. There are 30 PXes in Iraq.

Though run out of the Pentagon, AAFES generally receives no taxpayer money. Out of its 2004 revenues of $8 billion, AAFES poured its profits of $366 million back into the armed services.

Just like department stores stateside, PX stores in Iraq face increased competition from the Web, with soldiers going online to order flowers for their girlfriends or shoes for their husbands.

"They come in and ask me if we can match the prices that they find on the Internet," says Cafferty. "On some things I can, some things I can't."

The store has launched a "Bonus Bucks" sale to keep soldiers loyal, and the AAFES website also offers soldiers goods at discounted prices.

Specialist Kimberly Hardnett, 25, of Arlington, Ga., found educational toys at aafes.com to send her two children back home. "They can start to learn their ABCs while I'm away," she said.

Cafferty says the hottest items this year are little teddy bears with "Operation Iraqi Freedom" embroidered on them. Greeting cards are also big sellers.

"Not the 'Wish you were here' ones, that's for sure," Cafferty says.

This base even includes an Iraqi-run craft shop, with antique Middle Eastern coffee sets. An Iraqi artisan on the base offers to make brass plates with images of soldiers' families and loved ones for about $100.

But Christmas is a time of giving more than just spending. Many soldiers give each other gifts. Sergeant First Class Michael Flynn, 42, of Tampa, says one need not spend a lot of money to make a fellow soldier happy.

"Everyone wants a new digital camera or video camera or TV," he says. "But sometimes you make things for each other, or just buy little treats for each other. It goes a long way."

At Camp Falcon, soldiers festoon their bases with Christmas decorations, which they buy from the PX or get in the mail from relatives. They cobble together treats from the PX and from back home and send out invitations to their Christmas parties.

"We've had a lot of family members send a bunch of packages to us from back in the States," said Private First Class Drew Patterson, 21, of Noblesville, Ind. "We have a big Christmas tree in our day room. Our first sergeant is going to dress up like Santa on Christmas Eve and give out all the gifts from under the Christmas tree."