SIR – On behalf of many of our soldiers on tour in Afghanistan over the Christmas period, we would like to express warm and grateful thanks to all those generous people who donated goods or funds to provision boxes of Christmas treats. Thanks to such wonderful support we were able to send more than 500 parcels packed full of Christmas treats and festive items to our young men and women spending this special time so far away from their homes.

We have been inundated with letters of appreciation from individual solders and from their Commanding Officers telling us over and over again how this gesture of support has boosted morale.

Their thanks belong to you and the letters will be displayed for all to see when we next hold a coffee morning.

Special thanks to Buttershaw Working Men’s Club for their extraordinary fundraising on our behalf and to all those other clubs and pubs in the district whose collecting tins need frequently to be emptied. Every penny you donated became part of a soldier’s parcel.

S Thompson, Secretary, Armed Forces Support Group, Bradford