ATLANTA (AP) — Residents of an Atlanta-area retirement home want to know why care packages they tried to send to U.S. troops overseas were left sitting in a nearby post office for months.

Residents of the King's Bridge Retirement Community on Briarcliff Drive packed and sent more than 100 care packages, WSB-TV reported (http://bit.ly/1ht9fjp). They were intended for troops serving in Afghanistan for Veterans Day, more than three months ago.

But the packages only made it about a mile to a post office in DeKalb County.

A paperwork error resulted in the mailing not being processed, the U.S. Postal Service said in a statement.

"We sincerely apologize for this delay," postal officials said in the statement, promising that the packages would be processed immediately and sent to the troops on Tuesday.

World War II veteran Harold Dye says he put a lot of time into his note. "I'm at a loss for words in a sense," he said.

No one gave people at the retirement community any notification the packages were at the post office for so long, said Jim Waldrop, the center's executive director.