Christmas Gifts Bound For FOB Herrera

Hopefully, Christmas will be merry at Forward Operating Base Herrera, a remote US Army outpost in the mountains west of Kabul, Afghanistan. The members of the Colorado Chapter Thornton Harley Owners Group from Sun Harley-Davidson are counting on it.

The HOG chapter put together 80 different packages, each one shipped to a soldier from the 1-40 (ABN) Cav, an outfit adopted by the chapter, with support from Sun, while they’re stationed in Afghanistan.

“Every soldier will get a box,” said chapter assistant director Harry Schaaf. “We made sure that every soldier in the unit would receive a box of gifts for the holidays.’

In fact, they sent 18 extra boxes of gifts, just to make sure there were enough to go around.

“Each member took a soldier and put a box of gifts together just for that trooper,” Schaaf explained. “Everything was gift wrapped, and we all wrote a card or letter for all of them, so every soldier gets a letter, and a personally created box of gifts for Christmas. This is part of our Adopt-A-Platoon program, but we wanted to make sure we did something special for Christmas and make sure no one was left out.

Schaaf said that each box was different, since different members put together each box, but all shared a few common items.

“Magazines, pens, salty snacks, cookies, that kind of stuff,” he explained. “We even sent boxes of blank greeting cards so the guys could send cards to their friends and families. Some people did different things and sent different items, but everyone really stepped up. This is really a little thing we can do to let these soldiers know we appreciate them, we’re with them, and we want them to come home safe. We’ve been getting updates from them, so we know they appreciate getting the mail.”

CCT HOG shipped out the holiday packages October 21 to insure they made it in time for Christmas.

“We heard that they were going to hold on to the packages until Christmas if they got there early,” Schaaf said. “That way, everybody will have presents to open on Christmas. That's just great, too. It’s one reason we did this. I don’t know if we can do enough to thank them. I just hope every one of those guys has a Merry Christmas.”

The 1-40 (ABN) Cav is deployed out of Fort Richardson, Alaska, and is believed to be returning home around March of 2010.