CARE PACKAGES for our Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, 2006

patriciaruth ^ | 1-21-06 | patriciaruth

[patriciaruth]

Welcome to the 2006 thread of the Merry Band of Patriots!

Our grassroots, volunteer group of troop supporters has been sending care packages to servicemen and women in war zones since the summer of 2001 when we began by sending VHS movies and Snickers candy bars to the 101st Airborne and then later the 10th Mountain at Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo.

This last year we sent a couple hundred care packages to troops at Baghdad, Kirkuk, Mosul and Tal Afar in Iraq, at Bagram in Afghanistan, at Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo and to our wounded at Landstuhl Regional Hospital in Germany.

Our specialty in the past has been movies, books, snacks, holiday decorations and some appliances like DVD players and Playstations, and we have sent hundreds of movies to various bases.

This last year we had 6 main projects in addition to the usual care packages:

1. We sent over 80 state-of-the-art Petzl headlamps to our adopted company of Stryker Brigade Combat Team at Mosul and 35 to an MI unit at Kirkuk. This was probably the most appreciated item we've ever sent, thanks to a project that got off the ground due to the work of Spanaway Lori, HannaUSA , and Oatka and 3/4th of which was funded by my optometrist.

2. There was the Personal Care items "Emergency" Airlift to Bagram air base in June and July. (mathluv, nina0113, Coop, JustAmy, airborne, iceskater, Tunehead54, jtill participated.)

3. The 4th of July Party Decorations and Snacks blowout for all our adopted units. (pictures at posts 357, 358, 368 of our 2005 thread)

4. Operation Popcorn in August and September for the Engineers at Baghdad (iceskater, mathluv, SENClander, Coop, Abigail Adams, Ros42, Ican'tbelieve it, jtill and ebay's mshoponline sent over 600 bags of microwave popcorn, while omegatoo's were lost in the shuffle of her evacuating New Orleans prior to the Katrina flooding)

5. The End of Summer Luau for psyops at Baghdad in September and October (MJY1288 mailed off the party things we bought at eBay and Amazon with contributions from fanfan, kattracks, jtill, Just mythoughts, Ros42, Pig Rigger, MJY1288 and Kitty Mittens. Pictures at post 809 of the 2005 thread)

6. Halloween candy and movies for the Troops (kattracks, SENClander, Ican'tbelieveit, Abigail Adams mailed boxes in addition to the ones I sent with donations)

7. The Amazing Christmas and New Years Deluge, when it rained packages at all our adopted bases, especially at Tal Afar.
Special mentions go to Teams captains: mathluv (Engineers Baghdad), Ros42 (psyops Baghdad), CAluvdubya (Tal Afar), Abigail Adams (Stryker at Mosul), VeniVidiVici (MI at Kirkuk), nina0113 (Bagram, Afghanistan). Fairy Godmother Dept. (kattracks), Christmas Trees and Christmas Cards R Us (daybreakcoming), Shipping Dept (MJY1288), DVD Recording Dept (MJY1288), Webhosting and Photoshopping Dept (New Perspective), Daddy Warbucks Dept (my optometrist).

Among the many care packages sent by our troop supporters are these projects.
Boxes of school supplies for Iraqi children were sent by mathluv, Ican'tbelieveit, and my mother to Operation Crayon in Kirkuk.
Some members (CAluvdubya, angelsonmyside, 4integrity, ebay's susiemck) helped fill requests for Western Movies from an MI unit at Kirkuk (now home, movies still there) and Clint Eastwood and Adam Sandler movies from Fox Battery at Kirkuk (now home, movies still there).
bjcintennesse made many dozens of cooling neck scarves and sent them to pysops and Engineers at Baghdad.
DAVEY CROCKETT mailed boxesful of car magazines to a couple units.
A copy of the hardback book about the first year of the Revolutionary War (1776 by David McCullough) was sent to most of our units by DrDeb, iceskater, SwatTeam, and Just a Cowgirl.
Ros42 and mscht adopted a unit at Camp Ramadi for Christmas. (picture at 1195 of the 2005 thread).
CheneyChick and daybreakcoming saw to it that some care packages went to a remnant of our troops still in Kosovo.
Daybreakcoming's sister helped the staffers of the Louisiana legislature send about 8 boxes with around 32 bags of Christmas candy to Tal Afar.

Our many generous donors of checks, cash, money orders, Paypal, shopping cards, phone cards, etc are listed in the Accounting posts in our 2005 thread which can be linked from the post below.

We were surprised and emotional when we received back from our adopted units some of the items pictured below, and a big thank you to jkphoto for taking the pictures and webhosting them.

[MEG33]

Thank you so much for all you do for our troops!

[patriciaruth]

If you can get us in contact with a Stryker unit, we will send some headlamps to them.

[fanfan]

Great Canadian website!!

:-)

FreeDominion.com was started by two Canadian FReepers, Mark and Connie Fournier. Their server is in the US, for a good reason.

Free Dominion is the closest thing there is to a Canadian Free Republic.

Did you help get it going, or supply some of the troop care package information?

Just made a few comments and bumped the thread.

Styky posted it.

Cool, eh?

[patriciaruth]

Mailed directly by Petzl America on November 16, 2007, to Stryker at FOB Warhorse: 18 TacTikka Plus headlamps (4 L.E.D., flip up red lens, covered push button, batteries).
Cost: $408.78 plus postage of $17.85 = $426.63 (donations from Enterprise, jtill, manna, PigRigger, Kitty Mittens, and MEG33)

I haven’t been able to contact daybreakcoming who used to buy 6 1/2 feet tall prelit multicolored lights artificial Christmas trees and have them shipped to our units.

Right now our newly adopted Stryker unit at Baqubah could very much enjoy a tree for Christmas. Enterprise and ican’t believeit have donated enough to cover the cost of getting one, but we need a volunteer on the East Coast to pick one up at Walmart or Pennys or some store having them at a good price (around $100) and ship it out priority USPS before Thanksgiving. I can mail the volunteer a check to cover purchase and postage as soon as he/she knows the total amount.

I still had quite a bit of Halloween candy left despite having over 400 Trick or Treaters and so included it in these packages that went out to Stryker today.

Mailed November 17, 2007, to Stryker at FOB Warhorse at Baqubah, Iraq, 6 boxes
Box 1, value $108.00, postage $8.95
144 sample tubes of Crest toothpaste donated by my dentist

Box 2, value $47.11, postage $8.95
39 magazines:
14 Sports Illustrated (July 07- November 19, 2007)
12 Weekly Standard (May 21 – November 12, 2007)
5 Readers Digest (August – December, 2007)
3 1st Freedom (August, October, November, 2007)
4 Decision (July, October, November and special edition, 2007)
13 magazines/newsletters:
7 Washington Times weekly (June 25 – September 10, 2007)
4 Imprimis (June, August, September, October 2007)
2 Franklin Graham (October, September 2007)
2 Sunday Comic sections
Misc Stationery:
40 sheets ruled stationery paper
7 envelops
4 freebie Christmas cards
4 large packets of Wild Berry Skittles (2.17 oz)
25 packets of chicken flavoring

Box 3, value $15.98, postage $8.95
5 bags Halloween candy:
Snickers 43 funsize bars
Corn candy 22 oz
M&M peanut ~36 packets
Reese’s peanut butter cups 15
Pirates Gummy Skulls ~55
Individual Gummy skulls 7

Box 4, value $53.69, postage $8.95
6 DVD movies:
Air Force One (Harrison Ford)
Deep Impact (Tea Leoni, Morgan Freeman, Robert Duvall, Elijah Wood)
Galaxy Quest (Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Tony Shalhoub)
S.W.A.T.
Terminator 2, Judgment Day (Arnold Schwarzenegger)
Tuxedo (Jackie Chan)
1 Book: Hinge of Fate (book 4 of WWII series by Winston Churchill)
1 large 7 oz Hershey’s kiss in silver box
15 large packets Wild Berry Skittles (2.17 oz)
13 large packets Whoppers (1.75 oz)

Box 5, value $20.56, postage $8.95
4 bags Halloween candy:
Snickers 43 funsize
Corn candy 22 oz
M&M peanuts ~36
Hershey’s nugget minis 30.5 oz (~80 dark and milk chocolate with and without almonds/toffee)
10 individual large packets Whoppers (1.75 oz)

Box 6, value $18.72, postage $8.95
4 bags Halloween candy:
Snickers 43 funsize bars
Indian corn candy 11 oz
Oreo Cookies minis ~18 funsize
M&M plain ~ 18 funsize
52 individual wrapped candy:
29 Tootsie pops
15 Hershey’s nugget minis
8 large packets wild berry Skittles (2.17 oz)

[4Godsoloved..Hegave]

Our family would like to send some care packages to our troops in Afghanistan as well as Iraq.
Can someone here point us in the direction of what and where to send.
Feel free to freep mail me.

Thanks!!

[Dante3]

BUMP

[ALOHA RONNIE]

.

MEL’s -PASSION- sparked by -WE WERE SOLDIERS-

http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1085111/posts

http://www.Freerepublic.com/~aloharonnie/

http://www.Freerepublic.com/~anita1/

.

[patriciaruth]

We have a donor who has around 12,000 air miles accumulated if someone can tell her how to donate them to servicemen and women for travel home on leave.

Mass55th is going to get and mail the Christmas tree for Stryker at Baqubah. Yippee!

[donnab]

“We have a donor who has around 12,000 air miles accumulated if someone can tell her how to donate them to servicemen and women for travel home on leave.”

They could go here:
http://www.fisherhouse.org/programs/heroMiles.shtml

They have instructions on how to donate miles for the troops.
Thanks for all you do.

[cubreporter]

Don’t know how to go about it but am sure someone will be able to tell her. What a beautiful idea.

[toldyou]

Thank you so much for your service!

I stopped a few guys (separately) at the AAFES clothing store last week at Ft.Dix/McGuire to ask what my group could add to the 40 Christmas stockings we were packing this week. It was funny that the first item each mentioned was baby powder/foot powder.

[fanfan]

Is your Air Miles program the same as ours?

[fanfan]

Well done Mass!

Feels good, eh?
:-)

Merry Christmas!

[Kitty Mittens]

Thank you for your Work for our Military Men and Women, Dear Sister in our Lord! God Bless All who are Supporting them!

[SW6906]

Got a letter from Bagram:

Thank you so much for all your support. It means so much to all of the soldiers to know they are appreciated. The DVDs are great and keep everyones morale high. ;o) {personal information redacted} Many of the soldiers are just like me and have far more interesting stories. All of us really appreciate all of your support. Thank you so much, take care.

2007 TV shows sent so far:
Survivor China 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8
Smallville 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8
Scrubs 1-2-3-4
My Name is Earl 1-2-3-4

Thanks for all that you do, Patricia!!!!

[mass55th]

Thanks...Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas to you too!!

[sam_paine]

Fisher house in combo with my airline let me donate 250k miles which they supposedly matched for a total of 500k.

Problem is, the airline deducted them from my account, and I contected fisher house to verify, and they claim they have no method whatever for verifying, but they assured me, “it probably went through just fine.”

I’m not too plussed, frankly, as much as I trust the airlines.

Anyway, what do they say in the military? Fubar?

If I had it to do again, I’d try to fill the personal requests myself via someone like Patricia’s list for her goodie boxes.

You can get an award with your miles in someone else’s name, and while it’d be more tedious and problematic, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

Fisher house needs to understand that someone like me who likes to know things are really going to the troops do not like their “give a care” system and they won’t ever ‘handle’ any of my donations again.

[fanfan]

Thanks for the info. Sam.

[patriciaruth]

Ping

[patriciaruth]

I’m soo glad you got some feedback for all the work you are doing to help entertain our adopted units.

I’m sure they share the DVD’s out as the base is large, so lots of soldiers are probably benefiting from your dedication.

Yippee! You and they are awesome!