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But thanks to some workers at the post office in Bainbridge, where he grew up, the National Guard chaplain serving in Iraq received a gift box filled with goodies in late July. And the box included a "beautiful letter" from postmaster Lori Heffner.
The large box contained socks, licorice, newspapers, nuts, tissues and razors, among other items. But it was the letter that especially touched Brandt and brought back memories.
"In her typewritten letter to me, she named people who I haven't seen for decades, but remember as if yesterday," Brandt wrote in an e-mail of thanks to Lancaster Newspapers. "She named Harry, Sandy, Jennifer and Brenda, all people that were part of where I lived as a child and now visit as an adult.
"What astounds me even more is the fact that people with whom I haven't been in touch with for years remembered to fill a box with goodies and include a letter to some kid who stumbled through puberty and adolescence now serving in Iraq."
Brandt, 50, attended Bainbridge Elementary School and graduated from Elizabethtown High School.
He was pastor of Cedar Grove Presbyterian Church, East Earl, from 1987 to 1999 and was the progressive panelist on the former "Public Pulpit" on Blue Ridge Cable TV.
For two years prior to being deployed to Iraq last Oct. 2, he was pastor of Pacific Palisades Presbyterian Church in California. He expects to return to the states in late September.
The postal employees began the gift box project in response to an ongoing Postal Service "Support Our Troops" campaign.
In that campaign, a box can be sent by priority mail to any soldier serving overseas for $11.95, no matter how much it weighs. And as with all priority mail, the box and everything needed to wrap and pack it are free.
Heffner, looking for recipients, asked Brenda Rank, an Elizabethtown native and a part-time postal employee, if she knew anyone from the area serving in Iraq.
Rank recalled recently mailing a package from the Rheems Post Office to Brandt from his sister, Karen Newcomer, of Bainbridge.
"She mailed him enough Tastykakes to treat his whole platoon, 70 people," Rank said.
Rank, who was Brandt's neighbor in Elizabethtown when Ed was a teen, passed on his name to Heffner.
"I remember him as a nice Christian young man," Rank said.
"Everyone remembers (the military) at Christmas, but then they kinda forget," she said.
"What they are doing is so wonderful, and I love the United States of America. We all should take a little bit out of our paycheck now and then to let them know we're behind them."
Brandt appreciates that support while he is in Baghdad, " … a hot place, where summer temperatures range from 105-126 degrees Fahrenheit.
"I jokingly comment that if I were the biblical Abram, it would not take an angel from the Lord to tell me there is a promised land out there somewhere!" he wrote in an e-mail.
Brandt serves as 261st Signal Brigade chaplain at Camp Victory, supervising two battalion chaplains and, along with them, providing pastoral and spiritual care for more than 1,100 soldiers.
He said he has felt the ground below his feet shake from incoming fire, mourned the death of five soldiers killed by a fellow soldier less than two miles from his office and held memorial tributes for soldiers killed in battle.
"In some ways, I feel that many people in America have just forgotten that we are at war," he said.
He has learned while on active duty that "the U.S. military is comprised of wonderful people," he wrote.
"I have loved meeting our young soldiers, ages 21-26," he said, "and seeing them grow through this deployment.
"In addition, I have traveled to Basra, Balad, the International Zone, and Kuwait and have seen the destruction that war brings to a land and have met people determined to change Iraq for the better."
This was the first deployment in close to 20 years in the National Guard for Brandt, the son of former State Rep. Kenneth Brandt and Jean Brandt of Elizabethtown.
Since writing a letter of appreciation for the gift box, Brandt has received another package from the Bainbridge Post Office. It contained a case of potato chips.
"They arrived in less than 48 hours," he e-mailed Heffner, "and were more or less devoured by fellow soldiers."
Next, the post office plans to send homemade whoopie pies and cookies, and more care packages are planned.
