MAORI WARRIORS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 31, 6 February 1943, Page 6

MAORI WARRIORS

• WOUNDED MEN BACK RECEPTION BY RELATIVES (P.A.) WELLINGTON, this day. Mr. Hapi Love, father of the late Lieutenant-Colonel Love, former commanding officer of the Maori Battalion, welcomed the officer who succeeded his son in the command, Lieutenant-Colonel F. Baker, with an old Maori proverb: "Another stands in his place," when a reception ceremony was held for 121 sick and wounded, including one nursing sister and six members of the N.Z.W.A.A.C. at a New Zealand clearing hospital recently. "You have brought back the spirit of my son. His actions and his words help to lift from us our deep sorrow," said Mr. Love to .Lieuten-ant-Colonel Baker. "To-day sees us placing on our enemy the anxiety we felt at the start." "I assure you all you have every reason to be proud of the representatives of your families and your friends in the Second N.Z.E.F.," said Lieutenant-Colonel Baker to relatives of the returning soldiers who were at the reception. "I tell you I am proud to belong to it, and I say that after having fought alongside and against many other bodies of troops." The men were welcomed by Mr. Sullivan, Minister of Supplies, who said it was a matter of some distress to him that, among this batch of returned men there were so many cot cases, but he had never met a more cheerful lot of invalids. The attention they would get in New Zealand, following the good treatment they had already had, would assist them as speedily as possible on the road to recovery. Two-thirds of the returned men were cot cases, and the others walking cases.