ARMY TRANSPORT

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 74, 29 March 1943, Page 3

ARMY TRANSPORT

AMERICANS OVERSEAS

Great War Figures Doubled In First Year N.Z. Press Association.—Copyright Rec. 10 a.m. "WASHINGTON, Mar. 28. The War Department has disclosed that army transportation moved 891,827 men overseas in the first year of war and added that at present the shipping average is 821b of supplies and equipment daily for every man. The total shipment overseas amounts to 10,475,000 tons over shipping lanes averaging 14,000 miles in length.

The War Department also released comparative figures for the same period of World War 1., when 366,603 men were transported overseas with 431b for each man shipped daily by 1,727,000 tons of shipping over .shipping lanes averaging 6500 miles.

It was added that cargoes to-day sharply emphasise the increased mechanisation of the army. For example, the quantity of petroleum and petroleum products shipped overseas in the first year of the present war exceeds 80 times the amount shipped in the same period during last war.,

FACIAL WOUNDS

Benefit Of Plastic Surgery For Australian Soldiers ALL CASES SUCCESSFUL N.Z.P.A. Special Correspondent Rec. 10.30 a.m. SYDNEY, this day. . In four months 300 soldiers, suffering from facial wounds, have been given new faces at an Australian general hospital. Most of the men have been wounded in the New Guinea fighting and, by means of skin and bone grafting, plastic surgeons have been able to repair the damage, often without leaving a scar.

As yet Australia has only four highly-skilled plastic surgeons, three of whom are at the staff hospital. Two of them studied in England under the famous New Zealander, Sir Harold GillieS. Not one death has resulted in aIK the 300 cases already treated and a high percenaee of the patients have been returned fit to their fighting units.

HEROISM AT SEA

Rec. 10 a.m. LONDON, March 28. Pat Gordon, a 19-year,old London apprentice, has been awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for four days without a break manning a gun on board the 10,000-ton ship Dorset, of which he was a member of "the crew for nearly two years. The Dorset was proceeding to Malta' when she was attacked. She was hit by bombs four times and her petrol cargo was on fire before the master, Captain Tuckett who was awarded the D.S.C., and has since died, gave the order to abandon ship; Gordon was in the Dorset on one of her trips to New ealand.