Rose Hill ? “Dear Rose Hill Cookie Lady,

“The cookies you sent were delicious. I’ve never seen so many cookies go in so little time. I think one guy even ate some of the packing peanuts.”

– Army Spc. Benjamin Gutierrez, stationed in Iraq

If Merry Debbrecht had known last year what she would be doing now, she probably would have put in a double oven while renovating her kitchen.

Since February, the Rose Hill woman has made 27,000 cookies and mailed them to military personnel in Iraq and the Middle East.

It’s letters like the one quoted above that keep her baking and baking and baking.

“They (soldiers) eat them so fast,” Debbrecht said. “I just got an e-mail from one last night who said they were gone in seconds.”

Debbrecht bakes five to six days a week, for five to six hours a day.

“Twenty (dozen) is a slow day,” she said.

Her kitchen and front room are lined with boxes of packing peanuts and 25-pound bags of flour. Recipes for 16 different cookies are taped to her cabinets. Cooling racks full of cookies line a kitchen island while bagged cookies crowd a counter.

Merry Debbrecht removes sugar cookies from a cooling rack in her Rose Hill kitchen. Since February, she has made 27,000 cookies for U.S. troops serving abroad.

It smells like heaven.

“I warned my husband it’s going to look this way until the war is over. I certainly hope (U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald) Rumsfeld is mistaken. I don’t think I can do this for 12 years,” she said, referring to Rumsfeld’s recent comment about the war’s possible length.

She said her husband, Rick, had been “incredibly supportive, bless his heart.”

It was their grandson, 22-year-old Army infantryman Andrew Webb of Denver, who sparked her effort.

After he arrived in Baghdad earlier this year, Debbrecht started surfing the Internet for information on sending food overseas. She came across the Web site of the “original cookie lady,” Jeanette Cram of Hilton Head, S.C. Cram and several helpers have been sending cookies to troops stationed overseas since 1990.

Cram is four months behind filling cookie requests from soldiers, so Debbrecht got her to start sending the overflow to Rose Hill.

Debbrecht has always enjoyed baking. But she quickly learned that sending cookies halfway around the world requires a different set of skills.

For one thing, chocolate chips melt in the Iraqi summer, so they’re out (even though chocolate chip cookies are the most-requested type). Also impractical are frosting or jelly.

Instead, Debbrecht sends cookies containing regular and peanut M&Ms, sugar cookies, oatmeal raisin cookies, peanut butter cookies, biscotti and chocolate cookies made with cocoa powder.

Because the cookies take two weeks to arrive, they also must be packed with care. Debbrecht uses packing peanuts and cushioned boxes donated by Schwan’s Fine Foods to keep the cookies intact.

Whatever she’s doing seems to be working.

“I don’t know you but I love you,” one sergeant with a JAG unit in Iraq wrote, before begging for “just a few chocolate chip” cookies.

Debbrecht usually gets e-mails from troops on the same day the cookies arrive. Cards, letters and photographs follow.

She keeps up with the war by watching CNN, sometimes hearing about the units to which she has sent cookies. Two of them – a transportation outfit and explosives outfit – are engaged in especially hazardous duty.

The Debbrechts have footed most of the costs themselves. She said the cost runs at least $200 a week.

Merry Debbrecht said Clark Fence Co. and VFW Post 112 made substantial contributions, and about a dozen individuals have given smaller amounts. One lady gave her eggs until “something started eating her chickens.” Debbrecht said postage has cost her more than the ingredients. She has worn out one standing mixer.

After Debbrecht’s hometown newspaper ran an article under the headline “America’s New Secret Weapon” – “That was overblown,” she says with a laugh – Jerry Sue Gilley of Wichita started helping her fill some of the soldiers’ orders.

Debbrecht wishes more residents would find a way to support troops, whatever their views on the war.

“I just wish that Americans wouldn’t forget the troopers,” she said. “They’re going through such hell over there.”