Even though he was 6,900 miles away, Jason Warr got a "happy Valentine's Day" wish from his wife, Deb, in a face-to-face conversation Thursday. All the Warrs needed were a couple of computers, a $30 webcam and an Internet connection.

The Rapid City family is among thousands nationwide using modern technology to communicate with a service member who has been deployed because of the Iraq War.

The technology provides many more options for families to stay in touch than was possible in past wars.

Jason Warr is a captain with Battery B, 1st Battalion, 147th Field Artillery of the South Dakota Army National Guard. The unit is serving in An Nasiriyah, Iraq, about 193 miles southeast of Baghdad.

Battery B is based in Salem, but the Warrs live in Rapid City.

Warr communicates with his family with a webcam or with instant messaging five or six times a week. He said it makes it much easier to be away, especially with four children at home.

"I think when you have kids at home, it's really important, especially as fast as kids change," he said through a teleconference video chat from his base.

Warr was able to spare a few moments for an interview Thursday after his wife contacted him on her laptop and gave him a valentine's greeting.

"I think it's good, especially for our kids to be able to see him," Deb Warr said.

The couple uses e-mail, text chat and video conversations to stay in contact, and can do so at a reasonable price. Besides the cost of his computer, Jason Warr has to pay $100 per month for his own Internet connection.

Once online, he can use a special Yahoo feature to call his wife over the Internet for two cents a minute, which also enables the video conversations.

For the most part, the four children in the family enjoy the communication. But it tends to be hard on the youngest, 3-year-old Miranda.

"It's really, really difficult for her to be able to see him and not be able to get to him," Deb Warr said. The family mostly limits her communication with her father to phone and e-mail, because she can't grasp why she can't see him in person when she sees him on video.

"She'll say, 'Get on a plane and come home,'" Deb Warr said.

Modern technology also helped the family of Sgt. Ole Lassegaard, who recently returned from a 15-month stint with the 235th Military Police Company in Afghanistan. He said his family used video messaging, which he said "makes it a lot easier to know what's going on in the family."

Lassegard was able to keep in steady contact with his wife, Yvette, and five-year-old son Aric while he was overseas.

"Once (Aric) was able to see him, I think it made all the difference in the world, once we started instant messaging with the webcam," Yvette Lassegard said. "I think it made it more real for him that he was talking to his dad."

Lassegard said he has seen technology ramp up significantly since he first went to basic training 14 years ago, when he was more or less restricted to writing letters.

Towards the beginning of Lassegard's deployment, the couple used e-mail and instant messaging. They later used video messaging.

Recently, retired Vietnam pilot Frank Effenberger of Rapid City remembers when communication was even tougher than that. Effenberger served as a pilot in the active duty Army's 175th Outlaws from 1970 to 1971.

"Back in those days, if you actually wanted to speak to someone back in the United States, you had to go stand in line with a bunch of other guys in what they called a Mars Station," he said.

Mars Station calls involved radioing back to the U.S. to hook up a long-distance call. But the quality wasn't exactly ideal, Effenberger said.

"It was a pretty nasty connection, you know; it wasn't very good," he said.

That "nasty connection" included a 10-second delay between the two people who were conversing, he said.

The person on each end had to be careful to quit talking and wait for a response so they wouldn't interrupt the delayed transmission.

"You could ask a question; then you had to shut up and listen," he said.

Mail service to the United States was slow, he said. Some service members who changed locations often could end up waiting for mail for several months.

Effenberger said morale among troops is a lot better now than it used to be because of the increased communication that service members have with their families.

"It's improved now because of that, because they can talk to their loved ones back home," he said. "They don't have to worry as much. They can get resolution to it."

Effenberger can see the difference, because he also served in the Iraq War. He was deployed to Kosovo a couple of years ago as a CW5 pilot.

He said the only downside to keeping constant contact is that it can sometimes cause troops to become too worried about what's going on at home.

But Deb Warr can't imagine having to wait any longer than she does now.

"Waiting for that mail to come to see that he's safe, that'd be horrible," she said.

Contact Ryan Woodard at 394-8412 or ryan.woodard@rapidcityjournal.com