N.Z.E.F. NEWS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 229, 27 September 1941, Page 8

N.Z.E.F. NEWS

STAFF ENLARGED AUCKLANDER APPOINTED

The appointment of Private Fred Fleming to the staff of the Public Relations Officer's Department, New Zealand Expeditionary Force, in Egypt, is announced in a letter received this week. Private Fleming was a reporter on the staff of the Auckland Star when he enlisted in the Field Ambulance, First Echelon, on the establishment of the N.Z.E.F. in 1939. Prior to that he had served, as a territorial in the Field Ambulance. He served with his unit during the campaign in Greece, where he undertook dangerous work removing wounded and disabled under fire from advanced positions.

Early in the war Private Fleming's name was familiar to everyone, since he was the famous "Lonely Soldier" to whom no one wrote but the Commissioner of Taxes. Receiving a letter in which Private Fleming bewailed his lack of correspondence, save for the solitary letter from the Income Tax Department, a journalistic colleague made a "News of the Day" paragraph of this odd circumstance. Immediately people began to write to the Star seeking the address of the neglected soldier. The thing snowballed, and presently Private Fleming was deluged with mail. The paragraph was reprinted in Australia.

Sydney newspapers cabled the Auckland Star for Private Fleming's address. Soon there descended upon Private Fleming not only letters, but parcels and newspapers from all parts of New Zealand and various places in Australia. He had to call upon his pals to help him reply to the vast "fanmail." Urgently he wrote to his colleague on the Auckland Star to call the whole thing off. Too many letters were worse than none. Three Auckland Star Men With the appointment of Private Fleming, the Auckland Star now has three former members of its staff in the Public Relations Office. Mr. R. T. Miller, senior war correspondent, who was appointed after serving with Divisional Signals in the First Echelon, and who distinguished himself as the only war correspondent in Crete, which he "covered" for the world, and Sergeant H. G. Paton, official photographer to the N.Z.E.F., are the other members. Sergeant Paton's photographs of New Zealand soldiers and nurses in the Middle East are becoming widely known. The staff of the Public Relations Officer has been supplemented with journalists of the N.Z.E.F. since the fighting in Greece and Crete. Not only does this staff supply the familiar "N.Z.E.F. Official News Service," which figures in the daily newspapers of the Dominion, but it produces the N.Z.E.F. Times, a weekly newspaper published in the Middle East for our men in the field. Private Fleming is engaged in this work, and he states that the office of Public Relations resembles that of a busy reporters' room in New Zealand, with typewriters clacking the day long.