UNITS IN FRANCE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 217, 13 September 1944, Page 3

UNITS IN FRANCE

MEN AND WOMEN SELECTED

(By MARY WATTS) NEW YORK, July 12.

Mrs. Eliot Victor Pringle, chairman of Personnel for Service in France of the Co-ordinating Council. of French Relief Societies, has been checking over her lists of people whom the council will recommend for post-war service in France so that as soon as the invasion territory is sufficiently increased to warrant sending anyone, she will have several units ready to go. Mrs. Pringle has sent questionnaires to hundreds who have applied for post-war service in France and has selected from the returns about seventy men and women to make up the first units. Some of those on her list are French citizens. Others are Americans, but almost all have lived in France and have grown to have a considerable understanding of the French people. "That is essential," said Mrs. Pringle. "It would be most unfortunate if social workers or others sent over to France to do post-war work were unfamiliar with France and were inclined to think that because they did not understand French ways of doing tilings our ways were necessarily better. ' r Our whole aim :is to assist the French health services with equipment and technicians. We have not enlisted a great many registered nurses, but we have a number of nurses' aids, laboratory assistants and some X-ray operators. "Also we are hoping to provide motor transport for the social workers of the clinics who now go from house to house on bicycles, or often on foot, to visit the families where there are children. These women are endlessly devoted to their work for the children. "We might think that now that the Germans are having to get out of some parts of France, undernourishment would be relieved. But it may grow worse, because as they go they are bound to take with them everything that is movable. "We hope to provide complete mobile units of whatever kind are most needed. People who can drive trucks and other motors are being enlisted for this service, but we do not feel that it is enough for them to be able to act as drivers. They also must be trained either in nursing, in laboratory work, X-ray work, dietetics, occupational therapy, massage, clerical work, stenography, bookeeping or in child welfare activities such as kindergarten work or the care and feeding of infants. Some women also are being enlisted who have had experience in workroom management, machine and hand sewing and in cutting garments. "Some of the women enlisted worked in France in the last war. They are still in good health and strong enough to carry on the work which will be necessary now. Health and not age is considered. Their experience will be an asset." Mrs. Pringle is a refugee herself, having come here in 1940 after many years' residence in France. She is a British subject, her second husband having been a British officer, but she was born in this country of world travelling American parents. She has two sons now in England.— Auckland Star and N.A.N.A.