Thank The Forces garden party

This was the first event ever held by the new charity set up by Sue Smith in reaction to what she heard from her 23 year old son Carl Moya when he served in Afghanistan.

Sue was so moved to find out that some of his comrades out there received little in the way of contact from home that she decided to organise support for them by way of treats and presents to show them how appreciated they are.

This idea came about 18 months ago and, just four months after that, was gathering such momentum that she set up a registered charity to deal with the volume of interest and donations.

On Sunday afternoon she held a party in the garden belonging to her friend Kim Peppiatt, whose own son Keaton is 11 years old and won a Child of Achievement Award presented to him by Prince Harry for his charity work in supporting soldiers serving in war zones.

The event was attended by many local supporters as well as members of the Royal Grenadier Guards, and guest of honour Mark Christian who had just arrived back from Iraq and is in charge of all chaplains and padres who go out to serve on the front line - it is through them that Sue is able to send out her parcels from Help The Forces.

Sue commented: "We ask the public to give us stuff such as sweets, biscuits, treats and goodwill messages for soldiers serving in conflict. Then we box everything up and send it off via the military chaplains who pass the boxes out.

"The boxes have bags of sweets, tea, gifts, razors, boxer shorts - they are not food supplies because the men are not hungry out there as they have their ration. It's about a gift from the public to thank them for their services.

"Today has been fantastic - I am absolutely gobsmacked. There is not a lot that leaves me speechless...the fact is I never intended to start a charity, but the support and love from the public four our troops and all our forces is so immense, and there is no way to transport that love to those out in conflict. Within four months of starting we realised we would have to register as a charity because this would be big. Now we have been going 18 months and this is our first function - it is just fantastic.

"Everything has been donated - we pay for nothing. For instance another mother, Helen, did a sponsored diet and she paid for our van.

Her son who is 23 was out in Iraq. She lost 23lbs in eight weeks and raised 2,900 to pay for the van and insure it. And then the sign-writing Thank The Forces was done on it and we didn't pay for anything. I believe every penny people give us should so to the soldiers."

The charity is always in need of donations, especially brown paper and sellotape, so for details of how to get involved visit www.thanktheforces.com, or email on [email protected].