It gets awfully cold in the Afghan desert at night, and American troops need to sometimes take desperate measures to stay warm. One smart soldier in Afghanistan has stumbled on a trick, however: Bill O’Reilly’s book makes some damn good kindling.

An US soldier stationed oversees took to his Tumblr blog to tell the Web that donations of Bill O’Reilly’s book “Pinheads and Patriots,” which servicemen received an entire box of, might not be the best gift for the guys and gals involved in American military operations in Afghanistan. I suppose it does make a thoughtful 10-year anniversary gift, though.

“Some jerk sent us two boxes of this awful book (SPOILER ALERT: George Washington — Patriot; George Soros — Pinhead) instead of anything soldiers at a remote outpost in Afghanistan might need, like, say, food or soap,” blogs the soldier.

He adds that the decision to set the box of books ablaze came from his commander.

As blogged photos of the O’Reilly effigy went viral, the soldier returned days later to respond to the meaning behind the fire.

“The motivation behind the order to burn them was not political,” he writes. “As mentioned in the original post, we are in an extraordinarily remote location. We don’t have a post office here, so sending them back wasn’t an option. Extra space is scarce and alternatives that a few mentioned, like recycling, are nonexistent.”

While this serves as a message to those wondering what to send their pals overseas, it’s still a mystery as to who took an entire case of Pinheads and Patriots and shipped it to the middle of Afghanistan. O’Reilly himself had previously promised to donate copies himself to servicemen stationed in Iraq, but his camp has yet to confirm or deny that he was behind the shipment in question.

The blogger follows up with, “I won’t say I didn’t take pleasure in removing a few copies of this bigoted twerp’s writings from circulation, but the reason for doing so was military necessity.”