A Beer for the Road

Leave it to England – a country where the average man drinks at least a pint a day (nine pints a week) – to start a charity to collect beer money.

A bit of back-story: British military bases in southern Afghanistan are alcohol-free zones. So after a soldier does six gruelling months there, Royal Air Force brass thought it might be nice for the servicemen and women to enjoy a cold one on the flight home.

The country's breweries kicked in thousands of cans (as has Dutch brewery Grolsch, which gave 10,000), but Wing Commander Steve Chadwick – who helps run the military's TriStar aircraft fleet based in Oxfordshire – has begun appealing to the British public for donations so that every single returning soldier can have his choice of bitter or lager.

''I felt it would be a nice thing to do after the guys had done their time in theatre, on behalf of a grateful nation and the RAF,'' Chadwick told the UK’s The Telegraph.

He added: ''The principle is that a single can of cold beer thrust into the hand of a soldier once the TriStar is safely away from the ground and out of harm's way marks the point at which he knows he is going home after six months of fighting. It is just a token, but an important one.''

According to the Telegraph, about 1,000 servicemen and women travel every week between Kandahar Airfield in southern Afghanistan and RAF Brize Norton, a huge military base in Oxfordshire. (To see a video of Kandahar, click here.)

As the Brits would say, that’s not small beer.

The ''Beer for the boys'' fund has no Web site, but if you’d like to donate you can send a check, made payable to ''SIF Funds, RAF Brize Norton'' and with ''Beer for the boys'' written on the back, to Wing Commander Chadwick at 216 Squadron, RAF Brize Norton, Oxfordshire OX18 3LX England.

Photo courtesy of dotbenjamin via Flickr.