''I told her to throw herself a girl's night," said Grant, one of about a half-million women around the country who support soldiers through AdoptaPlatoon, a volunteer group that links families and pen pals with men and woman stationed abroad.

Normand is one of the roughly 160,000 ''adopted" US soldiers who have received weekly letters, birthday cards, and monthly care packages from women like Grant since the program began in 1998.

Goodies are especially welcome in Iraq, where comforts are few and soldiers don't always feel appreciated, Normand wrote in a recent e-mail from Baghdad.

''Unless you actually experience it, it's hard to get excited about getting mail," she wrote. The sergeant is visiting her family in New Hampshire this weekend and plans to meet Grant for the first time.

''For the first several months here in Baghdad we would have to work 12 hour shifts and sometimes go weeks without a day off, and it would take something as simple as a card or a hand written letter from a stranger to make you realize that all you're giving up to be here, is worth it after all," she wrote.

Like most ''adopted" soldiers, Normand's first AdoptaPlatoon contact was through an e-mail from another New Hampshire ''mom," Fran Dobson, of Seabrook.

Dobson, 61, who goes by the nickname ''Nanny Fran," spends hours huddled over a computer in her small home office, answering messages from soldiers and volunteers.

The six-year-old nonprofit group, supported through donations and grants, has no official military contact and doesn't pursue soldiers, said founder Ida Hgg , an English teacher in Cameron County, Texas. Soldiers find them online or by word of mouth.

Hgg, Dobson, and Joyce Lisiewski of Ohio, run the organization online from their homes, helped by 30 volunteers who interview families and pen pals. Volunteers send the items soldiers tell them they need and want, from barbecue grills and charcoal to DVD players or specialty heat-protective gloves, Dobson said.

She saw a giant spike in requests after the war began in Iraq, she said. And the e-mails keep coming.

A table in the foyer of Dobson's rural Seabrook home is overflowing with beef sticks, cookies, Gold Bond foot powder, and baby wipes, all ready for mailing.

''I still can't believe that there are kids who get deployed and they don't even hear from their parents," Dobson said. ''I've had a few soldiers write and say 'I'd like to get some mail besides bills.' "

It was this sort of plea that drove Hgg, 53, to begin writing to soldiers. Her son, who was serving with the Army in Bosnia in 1998, asked her to correspond with nine friends who never got mail.

She began by sending packages to the nine men. Soon, she was persuading her friends and community to care for her son's entire 40-member platoon. Then an adjacent platoon heard about the mailings, Hgg said.

''It just grew," she said.

A soldier suggested the name AdoptaPlatoon; a website followed. In
1999, Hgg won nonprofit status after losing a donation of 500 pairs of socks because she couldn't offer a tax deduction. The group tries to give each adopted soldier three contacts: two pen pals and a family, she said.

Young, single male soldiers are paired with young, single women, Dobson said, which means that AdoptaPlatoon occasionally breeds romances. But married soldiers are not connected with single women, she said. ''Unless they're older than dirt, like Nanny Fran," she added.

Normand said one friend, a captain she told about AdoptaPlatoon when she joined in January, has found love. He started getting letters from a female Air Force lieutenant in South Dakota six months ago, Normand wrote. ''They have never met, but they are convinced they are soul mates and will be married someday soon."

Many women, such as Dobson, adopt entire platoons and fulfill group wishes. Classrooms and companies also adopt soldiers.

Grant, who cares for three individual soldiers and a 10-person platoon, hooked Normand up with her grandson's first-grade class.

Some of the soldiers' letters are heart-breaking, said Grant, a Hampstead deputy town clerk. ''You send these simple letters and you get these cards that say 'Please keep writing.' I feel like I'm doing something."

Dobson, retired from running small businesses with her husband Buster Dobson, 54, said she too gets a lot back.

It's a passion for the Dobsons: Buster handles technical issues and writes grant proposals; Fran answers e-mail, shops for goodies, and mails packages.

They don't talk politics, they said. ''I'm not supporting the war, I'm supporting the soldiers," explained Buster Dobson, a Vietnam veteran.

''I wish it weren't even happening," said Fran Dobson.

''But as long as we have kids over there, Nanny Fran will support it," she said. ''And that keeps me busy enough without getting into the politics of it."

She checked her e-mail box and found 432 new messages. Among them was a note from a major, who wanted to know: Could AdoptaPlatoon handle 3,500 Marines.?

''We'll find a way," Dobson said. ''We always do."

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