Ask Air Force F-16 pilot Maj. Brian Gerwe what helped him and his 30-man detachment make it through a yearlong deployment to a remote air base in Pakistan, and he’ll tell you it was all about that one critical supply drop.
“It’s hard to describe just how much of a difference one box of video games can make,” he says. “It was essential.”
Former Army Capt. Stephen Machuga knows exactly what Gerwe is talking about.
Back in 2004, the airborne and Ranger-tabbed infantryman-turned-intelligence officer remembers getting an entirely different kind of care package when he was deployed to Iraq.
“It was more like a crate, really, full of third-hand romance novels from a library that was clearing shelves,” Machuga says.
He remembers thinking, “What in the hell are bunch of infantrymen going to do with these?”
Target practice, that’s what.
“Obviously, civilians want to help the military, but it’s very much fire and forget. It’s well-meaning, but it’s almost like a third-grade food-drive mentality sometimes. No, we don’t need a box full of dented canned yams.”
So he reached out to an old buddy in the gaming industry.
“He sent us a crate full of “DJ Hero” and “Guitar Hero” bundles and a bunch of other games. It was more than we could seemingly ever use.”
But they did use them all. A lot.
So in 2010, a few years after he left the military, looking for way to help troops still stuck downrange, Manchuga started Operation Supply Drop.
Manchuga, now a D.C.-based government counterterrorism analyst for the Pentagon, and his small team of volunteers have delivered more than $1.5 million in gaming gear to more than 100 units around the world.
A standard drop usually consists of a console, two to four controllers, headsets and about 15 games.
“We send drops to everyone — even dirty, nasty Marines,” he says with a laugh. Allied troops have even gotten in on the action, including New Zealand, British and Australian units.
“We’ve got about 100 requests at the moment, so it’s ‘rack and stack’ as we can fill them.”
Priority goes to units at the tip of the spear.
“We look at where they are in the world and what they’re doing. So, if they’re chilling in Kuwait in an air-conditioned building, the guys in Kandahar getting shot at will get priority,” he says. “We just got a request the other day from a Special Forces team that included a picture of one of their guys bleeding from an injury. So, yeah, they get to jump to the front of the line.”
Bundles go to anyone from individuals and small teams up to about company-sized units.
As combat deployments dwindle, Manchuga says he plans to put more focus on troops recovering at home and other overseas assignments. He’s already done drops to military hospitals and units in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Supply Drop also recently delivered more than $30,000 worth of gaming gear to a Warrior Transition Unit at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
As the holiday season approaches, Manchuga says he knows demand will only rise.
Gerwe and his team in Pakistan got their supply drop just after the holidays last year, and he says it was “like opening a giant Christmas present.”
“This wasn’t your standard big Forward Operating Base in Afghanistan or Iraq. It was just us at a Pakistani air force base without any real U.S. support. It really sucked,” he says. “Video games became essential just for a little time to disconnect from what you’re doing.”
And on the rare days they could get a stable Internet connection, he was able to join in on games with his kids back at his home duty station at Hill Air Force Base, Utah.
“All those games got us through the rest of that deployment,” he says.
If you want to help troops stuck downrange this holiday season, you can donate at http://ift.tt/1kf1HD2 .
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