01 Jan 2005:
Marty, our departure is at the end of Feb.   I have no problem having my name removed from the list, we have more than enough supplies to last us these last couple of months. I want to thank you for this excellent program. It has meant a lot to the Marines of HMLA-169 and HMM-166(Rein). It is always hard to find ways to enhance the morale of Marines when they are deployed and your website allowed us another means to facilitate this task.

Thanks for everything and take care. Semper Fi,

Capt Schillinger

Attached photos are of the Squadron Christmas card board, the Squadron Christmas trees, and the S-2 Officer in front of the gifts for the Marines.

Have a safe and blessed holiday season,
Troy

04 Nov 2004
Wow! Thanks for all the care packages and letters. I just recently returned from the Forward Operating Base (FOB) and there were 5 mailbags of packages and letters for the Marines. I thought a lot of the contents would go to waste, but thankfully I was wrong. The Marines went through the packages in less than 4 hours. It was amazing.   Our current situation remains unchanged. We are still mainly based out of Al Asad and are maintaining two other FOB’s with aircraft and Marines. It is starting to wear on a lot of the guys since there are no weekends or holidays over here where we get days off. The average Marine works from 12-14 hours a day. And the days all seem to run together.   Unless I look at my watch I could not tell you which day of the week it is.   
     I am in the process of getting a letter out to all of you that have sent letters and packages. I did manage to lose about 20 addresses while I was at the FOB. The computer’s hard drive crashed and I lost some files.   But I will have them in the mail by the 6th of November.
     For those that sent SASE for videos I will be mailing them out around the same time. I apologize for the delay. But, you will be getting an additional video from here as well. It is a family day video that we are sending back to the families in the states. I am still in need of a DVD burning program. If you are the computer whiz type I am sure you can help me out on that one.   
     I would like to send special thanks out to Cheryl, Suzette, Barb, Marc, Roganne, and Nancy. Your efforts are truly commendable; the Marines now look for your names specifically on the packages. Everyone is doing a superb job, I never thought that I would get this involved in the program but I have made a lot of new friends and more importantly the Marines morale, dedication and pride has increased.   This is a direct result of all of your efforts.
     We are finally over the hump (by a couple of days) of the deployment if all goes as scheduled. We are still anticipating a March return.   I have again gone around to each shop to find out what they would like to see in future care packages. I will list them at the end of this update. Ongoing Items we can still use are DVD movies, we have a small library of movies built in the common area but we only have about 20 movies.   
Here are the lists broken down by shop, please indicate in the package what shop the contents are for.

S-1 (Admin) –Beef jerky
S-2 (Intel) -Christmas decorations, lights
S-3 (Ops)   - Coffee, Filters, sugar, creamer, surface cleaner wipes
Ground Training - Mutli-vitamins, mach-3 razor blades
S-4 (logistics) – left handed baseball glove, starburst candy
S-5 (Me) – Gun Magazines, Outdoor magazines
QA – Fruit cups, dried fruits
Flight Equipment – Surfing Magazines, Parmesan garlic cheez-its
Maint. Control – Car Magazines
Ordnance – Snicker Marathon bars, Tuna
Flight line – Clorox cleaning wipes, canned soups
Avionics – Toilet Paper, Beef Jerky
Airframes – Video game Magazines, “Slappy Mama” Spice, Pieres Anthony Novels

Some Items that I have noticed that could be helpful are: USB thumb drives, computer games, MP3 music CD’s of all genre’s, and Copenhagen snuff (the exchange has been out chewing tobacco for close to a month).

Again, I appreciate the support that you have provided for the Marines, Soldiers, and Sailors that are over here. Hope to hear from all of you soon!

Sincerely,
Troy Schillinger

29 Sep 2004
     Once again it is becoming harder and harder to be able update the site due to lack of access to the Internet.   With the re-organization of the Squadrons we were consolidated for two short days and then sent back out to the various forward operating bases (FOB). Currently I am at FOB near the Syrian border. As you can see from the picture there is not a whole lot out here. We are supporting the ground units here that are in charge of keeping an eye on the border. It has been pretty quiet the last two weeks I have been up here. The biggest threat to the guys on the ground continues to be improvised explosive devices (IED's).   
     The mail delivery here is very slow. I only have received a couple of packages since we have been here. There is a small exchange that has the bare bone minimums for short periods and they usually sell out of those with a day or two of opening. Then it is closed for a week or so until the next convoy of supplies arrives.   Once again our tenure here of two weeks has been extended to a month and probably longer.   
     With that in mind I ask you to continue to send basic toiletries and snacks.   For specific items we are looking for a football and baseball or softball. It is a great way for these Marines to get some exercise and get a break form the daily routine here. Also, the temperature is getting a little cooler here at night and we could use some long sleeve shirts, of course the hard part is they need to be olive drab or tan in color.   Continue sending envelopes and writing materials. They go fast and its one way I can make sure they are getting letters out to their loved ones back there.   For the toiletries I will list them in order of importance.
1.     Deodorant
2.     Shaving Cream
3.     Athlete’s foot powder
4.     Shampoo - soap
For Snack items the most requested:
1.     Skittles - M&M's
2.     Fruit roll-up type snacks
3.     Tang mix
4.     Granola bars
And one personal request I have is for some hot sauce other than Tabasco, we have plenty of that and everyone is getting a little sick of it. And hot sauce is pretty much a requirement for some of the food we are getting here.
Thanks again for all the outstanding support we have received and are looking forward to your letters and packages.

Sincerely,
Troy

08 Sep 2004
Thanks for all the support! We are putting each and every package to good use.   We are currently transitioning back to our parent unit of Marine Light /Attack Squadron 169.   This is really transparent to us since we will still be operating out of the same bases and conducting the same missions. But, for administrative purposes we have a new mailing address as listed at the top of the profile.   If you have already sent packages to the other address within the past two weeks we will still receive them.   The hostilities here at Najaf are finally over and it has been really quiet the past week. We are continually training and ready if called upon again.
The items I listed on the previous posting have started arriving are being swept up by the Marines here. Please keep them coming. In addition to the items listed we have received stuff like footballs, board games, DVD's, and other items like that.   They are extremely popular.   So keep us guessing every now and then. For other items in short supply are olive green t-shirts, weapon cleaning gear (every woman’s favorite shopping item), boot socks, baseballs or softballs, and black or tan watch caps (stocking caps).   On a personal note if anyone has a DVD burning program that would be great. The one I brought out does not work. I have been trying to send back to our loved ones at home a slide show but have not been able to put it to disk. I am also creating another video for all of you that would like to see who we are and what we are doing. With that I am in need of blank CD-R's and blank DVD+R's.   If you would like a copy please send a padded envelope that is pre-posted (we only get to send letters for free) in your care package and I will have that sent out to you.   

Thanks,
Capt Schillinger

Attached is a picture of us with the Army pilots we flew with in Najaf

20 Aug 2004
I would like to start by saying thank you to all of you that have supported HMM-166 (Rein) through our initial phase here in Iraq.   The support we have received so far has been outstanding.   Currently, we are dual cited between Najaf and Al Asad. Our focus since the beginning of August has been the hostilities here at Najaf. This meant that about half of our Squadron has been forward deployed since the onset.   We have been engaging the Mahdi Militia on a daily basis and attriting their numbers.   I am sure most of you have seen this battle on the news, so I will not bore you with further details.

The conditions at our current forward operating base are primitive compared to main base. We are in tents, but we do have air conditioning. This is key for our night crews that stand alert during the middle of the night and try and sleep during the day. I can’t imagine trying to sleep in the middle of the day here with the temperatures exceeding 50?C. The chow is good but redundant, not a whole lot of variety. The showers were just completed a few days ago. That instantly was a morale boost knowing you can actually get a clean after a hard days work in the sun without having to use baby wipes.   The biggest complaint that I have seen so far is there is no exchange.   This is a problem due to the schedule that we were only going to be at the forward operating base for about a week at a time. This meant the Marines packed accordingly (packed for two weeks, we always plan for twice as long as we told) but, we have been here for over a month now.   Without the ability to go to the exchange and get simple things like soap, toothpaste, shampoo, razors and deodorant Marines are running out of these items.   The packages that we have received so far have helped for the short term and we request more of these items to help us sustain better.

Instead of me posting items on here that I think my fellow Marines want, I posted a “request sheet” up in the common tent.   This way I can let you know what we want collectively. The most mentioned items are: Current magazines, razor blades (Mach 3), beef jerky, envelopes, tuna fish packets (not cans), toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorant, shaving cream, batteries (AAA, AA), bars of soap, wet wipes, Chex mix, pre-sweetened drink mix (Gatorade, Kool-aid, Crystal lite), permanent markers (Sharpies), flashlights, foot powder, T-shirts (for PT, L, XL), smokeless tobacco (Copenhagen, Kodiak), cigars.
I do not condone the last two however; it’s what the Marines and Sailors requested.

I have wrote back to most that have sent letters and packages and have asked other Marines to write back to the I did not do personally. It is a great honor for us to serve a Country that has such patriotic support for their service members. I can’t express in words how the young Marines in the Squadron respond to letters and packages arriving from strangers they don’t even know letting them know how much they mean to them.   It gives us all a sense of pride, reassurance, and helps us focus on the mission at hand.   Thank You.
Attached are a couple of pictures from the skies above Najaf in the recent weeks.

17 Jul 2004
We have just arrived in theater, for may this is our second trip after being home for 8 short months. I have been pleased to see the improvements that have taken place in less than a year. But there is still along way to go. Currently on base we have pretty reliable electricity provided by generators. It is both 110 and 220 depending on which area of base your operating. We are currently still in tents with the hope of moving into pre-fabricated trailers soon. Since we are the Air Combat Element of the MEU we will be sending detachments to smaller less improved sites in about 10 days. These camps don't have the amenities that the "main" base offers. They are basically tent cities in the desert with barbed wire around them. I think this is where you fine effort could help us out. Operationally we don't "need" anything. What we need is the wants. This is the key to keeping morale and spirits high. I can't tell you how delighted and motivated the Marines were when packages came in last year. It was the little things they enjoyed. Whether it was snacks to quench the hunger of a mechanic at 0200 in the morning or the soap and toothpaste they were running low on. The same will apply this time. The Marines will not have to worry about where there next toiletry items are going to come from. Next, what I have seen in the last few weeks is the shortage of entertainment. We have a few board games and DVD movies for them to watch, but I can already see them getting bored with the repetiveness of the "same old things". We should focus on things to help them make the best of the situation and relax on their off time. In summary, I respectfully request not just the standard toiletries, hygiene products and snack foods, I also ask for DVD movies, board games, and other forms of entertainment to help pass the time until these hard working Marines return home to their families and loved ones.