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386th AEW delivers holiday meals to forward-deployed service members

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Andrew Park
  • 386th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs
SOUTHWEST ASIA -- Being away from home for the holidays can be an especially challenging time for deployed service members. Parents miss the opportunity to wake up early Christmas morning to watch their children charge into the living room to see what gifts Santa brought. Spouses wait for phone calls with highlights from holiday parties attended by family and friends. For those deployed to austere locations without many amenities, the holiday season can be especially challenging as they typically forego traditional holiday meals for field rations. This year, the 386th Air Expeditionary Wing brought a bit of holiday cheer to some of these individuals.

Three days before Christmas, the 386th Expeditionary Force Support Squadron began assembling tri-walls containing various foodstuffs to be sent to forward-deployed service members.

Airmen in the squadron moved quickly and enthusiastically up and down the aisles of food stored in rations calling out different items to each other, not unlike grocery shopping with family members before a big holiday party.

The storeroom manager emerged from a storeroom carrying boxes of marshmallows. One Airman asked whether they should send marshmallows with the meals. Another Airman reminded him that field rations often come with hot chocolate so the meal recipients might enjoy getting some marshmallows to go with it. The manager placed the marshmallows in the box while another Airman hollered from the back of the storeroom asking if anyone included peanut butter and jelly. They grabbed pies, cakes, soft drinks and other items for the delivery. The group took a lot of pride in preparing these boxes, trying to make them as close to an authentic holiday meal as possible.

In addition to these tri-walls of cold items, the 386 EFSS also prepared hot meals and vegetable trays shortly before they were loaded onto a C-130H Hercules. EFSS Airmen and U.S. Army volunteers worked side by side in getting this food packaged and put in an insulated box built by the 386th Expeditionary Civil Engineering Squadron.

One of the volunteers, Spc. Thompson, a U.S. Army generator mechanic, wanted to help in order to show thanks to those currently deployed to austere locations as he himself had previously spent time in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I understand how it feels not to have really good food, so I feel like it’s something that I can share with them even though I’m not there at the moment,” said Thompson. “It actually makes me feel really good being able to push it out to other people that need it the most.”

After the 386th EFSS prepared the food and packaged it for delivery, the 386th Expeditionary Logistics Readiness Squadron palletized the tri-walls, as well as some frozen turkeys and peanut oil so that the deployed members would be able to cook a truly traditional holiday meal. The pallets were then loaded along with mail and other supplies into the back of a C-130.

“They’ve loaded up mail, they’ve loaded up the food necessary to prepare a nice Christmas meal for these guys in these austere locations that we’re going to tonight,” said Capt. Teah Johnson, a 737th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron C-130 navigator. “It’s very humbling to be able to be a part of a mission. It’s bigger than yourself; it’s bigger than just your unit; it’s a lot of services all coming together and acting as a family, acting as a team.”

Much like extended family all getting together to celebrate the holidays, members across squadrons and military branches worked together to ensure their brothers and sisters in arms would also have a place at the table this holiday season.