Early on the morning of Sept. 18, U.S. Army combat veteran Ilene Henderson packed her pickup truck full of clothes, shoes, strollers, lawn chairs, wagons, toys and baby formula.
After driving three hours through the dark from her home in central Illinois to Crown Point, Indiana, she picked up more items from another veteran, then turned around and drove 5½ hours to Fort McCoy military base in western Wisconsin.
There, she’d meet an Afghan friend, Waheed, who worked as a U.S. Army interpreter alongside Henderson in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2005.
Henderson gave her truckload full of supplies to Waheed, his wife and their five children, along with seven other families who are friends of the family. She also gave some items to the medical center on the base and to some other Afghan interpreters who could help get the clothing and supplies to some of the roughly 13,000 Afghan refugees at the base most in need.
“We owe it to these people to get them the things that they need,” Henderson said. “They have fought alongside us. They have put their lives on the line.”
But a new policy bars Henderson or any other individual from bringing any further donations onto the base to help families.