Troops say thanks for all your gifts

In October and November Chronicle readers kindly donated items to our annual appeal to send Christmas cheer to the forces.

The specially requested gifts included sweets, toiletries, biscuits, crisps and puzzle books.

They were then posted to the No 3 RAF Tactical Police Wing from RAF Henlow. The parcels have arrived in Afghanistan letters of thanks.

Corporal Aaron Thompson is working in the airport at Camp Bastion in the Air Transport Security Section, providing protection for people flying to and from Camp Bastion.

He wrote: “Thank you all so much for taking the time and making the effort to provide the guys out here with these boxes.

“The treats go down very well as there isn’t a large choice of sweets and treats out here for us to buy.

“One item I was particularly happy to receive was the moisturiser. It’s currently very dry and very cold in Camp Bastion so the moisturiser comes in extremely handy.

“The guys out here get a real morale boost when we receive boxes like these.

“It’s nice to know that the people in the UK appreciate what we’re doing out here and care enough to put in precious time and effort to send items of this nature.”

Rhiannon, who is also in the Air Transport Security Section, wrote: “We are all looking forward to Christmas here although it will be hard being away from our families, especially those who have children back home, but we plan on celebrating it as best as we can.

“All of us girls here seem to have a sweet tooth so we have all thoroughly enjoyed the sweets that were sent.”

Another wrote: “Parcels or ‘morale’ as we call them are brilliant for raising the troops’ spirits and we cannot thank you enough.”

Last week RAF Henlow invited appeal organiser Ken Lynch to the camp for a surprise presentation.

They gave him a picture showing the RAF Police work in Afghanistan to thank him for his support.