School gives backing to our Merry Christmas campaign

That is why the teachers and pupils at Buryfields Infant School, the local school for many of the families stationed at the north Hampshire base, are among the first to back The Gazette’s Operation Merry Christmas.

The campaign, launched last week, aims to give a bit of Christmas cheer to nearly 170 people from RAF Odiham who will find themselves on the frontline during the festive period.

A total of 31 personnel from C Flight of 27 Squadron will leave the base at the start of December to join the 136 personnel from RAF Odiham who are already out there.

Readers can send in Christmas cards and messages of support for the men and women from RAF Odiham to The Gazette, and we will pass them on so they can be opened in the war-torn country on Christmas Day.

Sue Croft, head teacher at Buryfields Infant School, in Buryfields, Odiham, said 45 per cent of the 166 children at the school have one of two parents in the RAF. Many of the teachers also have husbands and wives at the base.

Miss Croft said: “I think the campaign is a great idea and we are keen to do something ourselves to support it.

“It is really important that we understand and do what we can to support parents back at home as well as those who are out in particularly hostile areas.”

The six and seven-year-olds in Lime Class at the school have already started work on their letters.

The children imagined what it would be like to get a letter if they were in the RAF in Afghanistan over Christmas, and came up with ideas of what to write.

Eloise, seven, said: “I would say thank-you for fighting in the RAF a long, long way away.”

Miss Croft said supporting children whose parents are away on active service is a day-to-day reality at the school.

She told The Gazette: “Sometimes we have got both a mother and a father who are away so we have strategies in place to support the children and the families. But people are very positive and it is part and parcel of their life.”