THINGS OF HOME

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 42, 19 February 1943, Page 2

THINGS OF HOME

SOLDIER'S THOUGHTS

TEN THOUSAND MILES AWAY

Home sickness is not something to be paraded, or, perhaps, even confessed, but there are few men so tough as to be completely unaware of it. writes Lance-Corporal A. Jones in the N.Z.E.F. Times, Middle East. To-day, in its .acutest form, it is concealed beneath that blanketing euphemism—anxiety neurosis—but few of us have the misfortune, or the fortune, to develop it in such malignance. To the majority it is merely a nostalgia, holding them in a melancholy grip at those times when they pause to reflect on the celebration of oldaccustomed feasts, like Christmas, in a country ten thousand miles away. Not the Brave Occasions And, at such times, it is not the brave occasions or the unforgettable spectacles of other days that men think of as their minds wander back to home and friends, and a personally ordered existence. Nor is there great consolation to be had from the vivid recollection of places and things seen in those years that have slipped by since they left home.. Sydney with its noise and its harbour -bridge, Perth's unequalled hospitality and incomparable cathedral, the warm green beauty of Colombo, the kaleidoscope of Bombay with its kites foreverwheeling over Malabar Hill, the sombre grandeur of a thunderstorm at sea, the fantastic splendour of sunsets in the Indian Ocean, purple dawns in the Red Sea, elusive, enticing Cairo, the steamy unreality of Beirut, the pathetic «tudy in decay that is Damascus, the artless architecture of Tel Aviv, or the hallowed antiquity of Jerusalem —all these are but things that pass. Even in their novelty they are not so very far removed from the familiar existence of daily newspapers, clanking trams, Virginia cigarettes, telegraph posts and streamlined bars. Watching the New Zealand coastline fade gradually into the limbo astern, as the great transports sailed away all those years ago, most of us probably thought we had burnt enough boats to bridge a Hellespont. But how little we knew! We had yet to reach the stage when the future would begin to look like an extremely long, straight, dusty, shadeless road down which you have to wander forever —and eVen then find yourself walking it still. We had still to realise the inextinguishable permanence of a host of small things.

All This is New Zealand Simple things all of them —clean white china, gleaming silver, crisp napery and crystal; shining bathrooms with glittering taps and "the benison of hot water"; mirrors and carpets and windows that catch the sunlight; pictures and etchings and old photographs, the smell of hot suds and furniture polish, and cleaner; women to speak to, laugh with, drink to; furs and the homely drone of a vacuum; soft hands to touch;- conversation and friendship and affection in some more tangible form than the written word; children with interminable questions and the zest of life in their eyes; the frightening rattle of the milk cart when you sneak apprehensively home at dawn; pay days, birthdays and feast days; the glow of embers in a slow fire round which friends gather; smooth cards and favourite books and radios; the thrill of the crowded racecourse, and the skipped heartbeat that follows, "They're off," when you've go't the rent on the outsider; well pressed clothes and shining shoes—these and a multitude of others, equally unimportant, are the things that thousands are thinking of in the Middle East at the present time, for no other reason than that even metre than the tang of manuka, the glory of gorse in high bloom on the hillside, the gay chatter of rivers over stones, the beauty of lakes, and the grandeur of snow-covered they spell New Zealand and home.