Send a card to the Tigers in Iraq this Christmas

9:48am Monday 17th November 2008

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FOR most of us it is a day traditionally spent with loved ones.

It’s just five-and-a-half weeks until Christmas arrives, when people in households across the county will be waking up to open presents together.

But for hundreds of soldiers across Hampshire this year’s festivities will see them thousands of miles from home and separated from their families.

This week more than 350 men from the county’s regiment, The 1st Battalion The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment, will begin flying out to Iraq for another tour of duty in the war-torn country.

Today the Daily Echo is asking readers to show they are thinking of the boys this Christmas – by sending soldiers a Christmas card from their home county.

Schoolchildren are being urged to make cards or Christmas posters that will be posted out from the newspaper offices in time for them to arrive in Basra for Christmas Day.

Readers of all ages as well as local businesses and dignitaries are also encouraged to put pen to paper and send Yuletide greetings to the soldiers – many of whom will be going into Iraq for their first time.

For more experienced Tigers it will be a second or third visit – but the first time any of them have been on operations in Iraq over Christmas and New Year holidays.

Stu Horder, 1PWRR’s Regimen-tal Sergeant Major, explained: “It will mean a lot to us in Iraq to receive Christmas cards and messages from the UK.

“Inevitably our soldiers’ thoughts turn to home at this time of year, and while we still have a job to do it’s good to know that the people of Hampshire haven’t forgotten about us.”

The cards received will be packed together and sent off before last posting at the start of December.

The scheme has won the backing of New Forest West MP Desmond Swayne, a Territorial Army major who served in Iraq in 2003.

Mr Swayne, who pledged to send a card himself, said: “It’s an excellent idea.

“The thing that tends to undermine the troops’ morale more than anything else is the feeling that people back home have forgotten them and don’t appreciate what they’re doing.

“What the Daily Echo is doing will serve as a powerful corrective and will make a big difference.”

HOW TO SEND YOUR CHRISTMAS WISHES:

Simply write or make your card, complete with your own message to a “Tiger” and then send it in an envelope addressed to: Tigers at Christmas, c/o Jenny Makin, Newsdesk, Daily Echo, Test Lane, Redbridge, Southampton SO16 9JX.

We ask that cards and posters are no bigger than A4 and that you include your name and area where you live – i.e Bitterne, Winchester, Fareham.

Please do not include any gifts or money as they will not be sent.