ACHILLES HEROES WELCOMED HOME

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 46, 23 February 1940, Page 8

ACHILLES HEROES WELCOMED HOME

Acclaimed By Vast Crowds

Auckland Pays 7 ribute SAILORS MARCH TO MIGHTY CHEERS A welcome meet for heroes was accorded' the predominantly New Zealand-bred ship's company of H.M.S. Achilles when the cruiser returned to Auckland to-day with the honours and scars of the famous Admiral Graf Spee battle thick upon her. It has been asserted that the people of Auckland cannot cheer. To-day they lived down that reproach. They cheered themselves hoarse in acclaiming New Zealand's own young sons of the bulldog breed—Anzacs of the sea, who, like their khaki-clad kith and kin of 25 years ago, on the grim cliffs of Gallipoli, made a valiant fight against a seemingly insuperable foe. SHIPS' SIRENS BLARE THEIR GREETING. H.M.S. Achilles entered port at 6.30 a.m., after a rosy dawn, to be greeted with Auckland's traditional ceremonial welcome of small craft waiting under the lee of North Head. But much more than that awaited her. Royal Air Force 'planes flew and dipped in salute overhead, bluejackets of the cruiser's own station at Devonport gave resounding cheers, which were heard in distant Ponsonby, and the whole beflagged harbour echoed and re-echoed to such a hullabaloo of mechanically-contrived noise as the city has never heard since sirens were invented. The whole city gave itself over to rejoicing on a grand scale. There were tender and touching reunions on the wharf as families were reunited with beloved fathers, sons and brothers, while the girls whom the Achilles boys had left behind them waited in a flutter of excitement for a fervent embrace of welcome. In a march up Queen Street to a civic welcome at the Town Hall, the officers and men of Achilles had the place of honour, following the largest military parade ever seen in Auckland. Territorials and cadets lined the route. CLOUDS OF CONFETTI IN QUEEN STREET. _ The city's heart beat high to martial music, and, as the heroic ship's company passed, preceded by their beloved commander, Captain W. E. Parry, wave on wave of cheering broke from the admiring crush of people on the pavements. Confetti and a storm of torn paper was thrown from upper windows, after the fashion of a New York welcome. Auckland made it apparent that officers and men of the valiant Achilles had ft warm and lasting place in her heart.