Christmas trees for troops pining for home

James Adelis Jr. likes to think that the Christmas tree is still there.

He imagines it living, growing, planting itself deeper into the earth in Iraq, hanging on, despite months of brutal heat that can spike to 150 degrees.

"I watered that tree every day and it was still green the day I left," Adelis, 26, an Army veteran, remembered as he watched a crowd of more than 100 people make ready to send 500 fresh Christmas trees off to soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"I hope it's still there," he said, shivering, as he pulled up the collar on his jacket.

Adelis still wears the fresh face of the 19-year-old he was when he left Long Island for Iraq, seven years ago, as an Army specialist.

He was assigned to Camp Anaconda in Balad, Iraq, fighting for his country - and trying to stay alive - doing dangerous convoy work, dodging bullets and making a way through bombs.

In 2004, while he was in Iraq, a woman - who to this day remains unidentified - walked into Dee's Nursery in Oceanside with an unusual request: Could she send a fresh-cut Christmas tree, with decorations, to her son in Iraq?

Nursery owner Tom DiDominica Sr. put the question to Adelis' businessman father, James, another shop customer. Adelis then enlisted support from DHL Express and the local community to send multiple trees - along with lights, ornaments, holiday cards and menorahs - to soldiers at Camp Anaconda, one of the largest U.S. military bases in Iraq.

The younger Adelis remembered meeting the DHL plane at the base airstrip and loading trees into a truck.

"I smelled the pine," he said, "and I closed my eyes and for a minute it was Christmas and I was safe at home."

Then reality intruded. It was still dark that morning in Iraq. And it was raining. Adelis remembers that even at that hour, he could hear gunfire and the sound of bombs going off.

Nonetheless, Adelis and a friend set out on a mission that morning. They would spend more than 7 hours driving around camp, delivering fresh-cut Christmas trees with all the trimmings to groups of stunned soldiers.

"Nobody could believe it," Adelis said, with a smile. "It was like, 'Where did you get this?' "

Six-foot-tall Christmas trees sprouted around Camp Anaconda that year. But the biggest tree of all - 20 to 25 feet tall, Adelis remembers - went up in the center of camp.

"With all the lights, even the Iraqi people could see it," Adelis said.

Little could Adelis - or the soldiers stationed at Camp Anaconda that Christmas - know that they would become the lucky first recipients of a Christmas tree delivery program that would grow.

Monday marked the seventh year of "DHL Operation Holiday Cheer." Dee's has donated more than 5,000 trees to the effort, and DHL has donated the cost of shipping the trees, along with boxes of other holiday gifts.

And Adelis, of East Rockaway, who now works with his father at the elder Adelis' security firm, has been on hand to help load the trees ever since he returned home in 2005.

The trees that Adelis and others helped load Monday traveled the 10 miles from Oceanside to Kennedy Airport in a miles-long motorcade.

The trees will leave New York this morning. By Thursday, they will be in Afghanistan, Iraq and Bahrain. And, once again, in the hands of soldiers.

"It's important because when you're there, especially around the holidays, you think of home," Adelis said. "The trees help."

And they will keep helping.

"We're going to do it for as long as we have to," he said. "We'll keep going until every single soldier comes home."