I don't know quite what it is about this story that gets me.

The grandmother of a young man in the Air Force made him a stuffed doll to beat on when he got frustrated and homesick. She didn't think he'd even want it, but he wrote back and asked for more of them. His colleagues wanted their own, and she complied.

She's sent out 17,000 of them so far.

"Everybody around me asks for one," [her grandson] said in a phone interview from his base in Little Rock, Ark. "And I tell them, even if they destroy one, that's what it's for. I can give you more."

The foot-tall figures are made during periodic gatherings of military spouses, college students and friends who form assembly lines in Davis' garage in this small city outside Columbia. Piles of dolls covered tables and bookshelves.

Davis formed a nonprofit group to absorb the costs, with shipping being the highest expense. Most of the supplies are donated, she said.

"When you come to a workshop to help, you have to bring a box of stuffing," she said. "We will feed you, but you have to bring some stuffing."

It surprised me at first that that they'd be so popular, but it's a handmade, American thing, in the middle of the desert. It's personal and punchable at the same time. What's not to love?

Army Staff Sgt. James Borchardt said that when tension rises in his tactical operations center in Iraq, he grabs his doll by the legs and beats the stuffing out of it.

"It made me laugh more than anything," he said in an e-mail. "I gave them to almost everyone in my unit."