"Welly Boxes" are the brainchild of Theresea Evans, mother of Lance Bombardier Llywelyn Evans, who was killed with seven British colleagues and four Americans when their US Marine Corps CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter crashed south of the Kuwaiti border on March 21 2003. Welly, as he was known to his friends, was one of the first UK casualties of the Iraq war.

Theresea started "Operation Welly" in 2009 to provide soldiers with shoeboxes full of unused goods such as toiletries, examples being toothpaste and deodorant, tissues, plasters, roll on deodorant, also pens, playing cards, sweets, as long as they have at least six months before the sell by date, basically anything you think will be useful, as long as it fits into a shoebox.