Pack 1331 coordinated a drive to collect, assemble, and send 300 Christmas stockings to the Army’s 61st Battalion in Iraq for Christmas. We asked each unit to spread the word to your members about this worthwhile project. Together, we made a difference in the lives of many of our troops in harms way this holiday season.


Donations were collected at Wildewood Baptist Church on Saturday, Dec. 3rd from 9 am to 12 noon. Volunteers then took all donations, divided them into as many stocking packs as possible, assembled the stockings, and prepared them for shipping.


Special thanks to Troop 1332 for offering assistance in collecting and assembling stockings, Innova Electronics for providing shipping materials and donating shipping costs, and Wildewood Baptist Church for allowing us to collect and assemble these items there!

Contact: If you have any questions please contact Jan Watson at pack1331@yahoo.com or (281) 748-0800.

Yours in Scouting,

Jan Watson
Pack 1331

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Throughout its proud history, Soldiers of the 61st Multifunctional Medical Battalion (Prov) have bravely and selflessly served our Army and nation, whenever and wherever called, living up to its motto, “Brave Mercy.”

Texas Based:

The 61st Battalion is deployed out of Fort Hood, Texas.

Our Contact:

Our contact is the battalion’s chaplain. He will receive and distribute the stockings to soldiers in the battalion and soldiers in the unit’s hospitals. The Chaplain is the uncle of one of our Wolf scouts.

Mission:

Organize, train, deploy, and command and control attached and assigned units of a medical task force; and provide level I and level II combat health support to include far forward surgical capabilities, advanced trauma life support, sick call, patient holding, dental services, diagnostic services, preventive medicine, mental health, optometry, and ground evacuation services on an area support basis.

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Boy Scouts give in the holiday spirit

01:31 PM CST on Sunday, December 4, 2005
By Chau Nguyen / 11 News

A local Boy Scout troop is saying thank you to soldiers in Iraq, but it is truly a lesson in giving, after something valuable was stolen from the scouts.

The Cub Scouts of Pack 1331 and the Boy Scouts of Troop 1332 are playing Santa.

They are stuffing 400 stockings with everything from toiletries to candies to go halfway around the world.

Pretty soon, soldiers from the 1st Battalion out of Fort Hood will receive boxes full of the stockings.

The project to send stocking started 12 days ago and since then, their scoutmaster said they have been hard at work.

“It’s a lot of excitement, there’s no, nobody’s grumbling at all,” Scoutmaster Allen Cross said. “I mean they really see the sense of doing all this.”

Taking part in projects is part of being a scout, but this year for the troops was a little different. This year, the boys suffered a setback, because the trailer they had been using for camping trips was stolen.

Instead of raising money to buy a new one, the boys decided helping troops was a more worthy cause.

“I think the troops need our help because they’re kinda homesick, and they need our support,” said Boy Scout V.S.

“We can always work around getting another trailer we can maybe borrow, so we’d rather do something like this,” said Boy Scout K.M..

In this holiday season, the scouts prove that there’s something much more to be gained when you give back.

www.khou.com/perl/common/video/wmPlayer.pl?title=www.khou.com/nguyenscout10_5124.wmv 1:24 p.m. This clip was aired 12/05/05 on Channel 11 @ about 11:30 p.m.). Link updated 1.6.6.