"BIRDIE" ACCEPTS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 110, 11 May 1943, Page 2

"BIRDIE" ACCEPTS

MAIN BODY PATRON AUCKLAND EX-SERVICEMEN Neither time nor distance have dimmed the memory or lessened the affection of Anzacs for their old commander, General Birdwood, now Field-Marshal Lord Birdwood of Anzac, who took the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps on to the shell-swept slopes of Gallipoli, and as the years roll along their deep

reverence for a great leader is demonstrated in diverse ways. He is patron and president of many exservicemen's organisations throughout New Zealand and Australia, and his comradely interest in their welfare finds frequent expression in his communications with them. In reply to a request, Mr. J. H. West of Auckland, honorary secretary of the N.Z.E.F. Main Body Association, received . the following letter, in his own hand, from "Birdie," from the Guards' Club, Brook Street, London, dated February 14:— "Dear Mr. West, —I thank you for yours of November 14 just received, and of course I will be glad and honoured to continue as patron of the N.Z.E.F. Main Body Association. What wouldn't I give to be young enough to be once more on active service with those very best of fellows, my old comrades of the last war. But time is inexorable and we have to bow to it. Still, my thought and heart are always with our troops —especially my old Anzacs—and I rejoice whenever I hear, as I so often do, of their great deeds and continued successes in face of a brutal and hard-fighting enemy. What a welcome will await them when they return home. Please give my kindest remembrances and good wishes to all old comrades.—Yours sincerely, Birdwood of Anzac."

Major-General Sir Andrew A. H. Russell is co-patron of the Main Body Association.