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GREENSBORO — Around Thanksgiving, Pfc. David Sisson will get a surprise in the mail.

The 10-pound  care package will come from Sandra Worsham, a Greensboro woman and a stranger to Sisson, a member of the 82nd Airborne Division who’s stationed in Iraq.

Atop all the socks, Q-tips , batteries, mints and playing cards, Sisson will find a hand-written note.

“Enclosed is a small token of gratitude for keeping us safe,” Worsham wrote of the items she packed Tuesday morning at the Honda Aircraft Co., where she works. “Your gift of service is so much greater.

“Please work hard to come back safe and sound. Happy holidays to you and your family.”

Thanks to the employees at Honda, 500 care packages will be shipped to soldiers from Fort Bragg and Marines from Camp Lejeune  who have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Honda officials called the $35,000  effort Operation Deep Appreciation.

“I think a lot of service members will be surprised to get an unexpected package,” said Stephen Keeney , Honda Aircraft’s senior manager of corporate affairs. “We wanted to touch as many as we could.”

Honda executed the packing operation much the way its workers will build the company’s $3.9 million HondaJet, a light business aircraft, beginning in 2011 — with precision.

“We’ve kind of set up a production line,” Keeney said. “We’re an engineering firm, so we don’t like to leave anything to chance.”

The company’s 450 employees filed through a hangar-sized room, filling each 12-inch-by-12-inch-by-5-inch box with 25 items, such as hand sanitizer, Tabasco Sauce  and a string of holiday lights.

Troops in the field call the sanitizer “a shower in a box”; they like to add the Tabasco to their field rations; and the strings of lights will brighten a bleak corner of the world for those who can’t get home for Christmas.

Jon Wells , Honda’s manager of logistics and a retired Marine, remembers getting such a package from a 5-year-old stranger when he served in the first Gulf War.

“When someone sends you something like that, it really brings you back to home,” Wells said. “When you are thousands of miles away doing a job, (it helps) to know people are still tied to what you are doing.”

The letters add a personal touch to boxes filled with shampoo, M&Ms  and deodorant.

“It’s a good feeling to share with someone who had to give up their own comforts in a holiday time ... so that we can enjoy our comforts,”  Worsham said. “We have it pretty comfortable here.”

The care packages also include a couple of plugs

for Honda — a HondaJet poster and an olive drab HondaJet baseball cap.

“This lets them know this (plane) is being built in North Carolina,” Keeney said. “We are North Carolina’s only jet aircraft manufacturer. We are very proud of that.”

Contact Donald W. Patterson at 373-7027 or don.patterson@news-record.com