With Our Airmen

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 308, 29 December 1944, Page 4

With Our Airmen

Excerpts GraOe And Gay From Their Letters Home Here are some more revealing excerpts from the letters of New Zealand airmen abroad. Won't yon please send in some readable tit-bits from the letters of sons, relatives or friends? A'Jdress: With Our Airmen. Auckland Star. Auckland 9 WASHING Boy! Do I have to do some washing up here in the Islands. Underclothes every day and drill every two days. 1 should be pretty handy about the house when I come home. —Flt.-Sgt. F. L. Bish (Ponsonby). © I.IKE BUAWAI FLATS I am now on my fourth station since arrival in England. This one is in the county of Cambridgeshire, which is in what they call the Fenlands. These fens remind me a great deal of the Ruawai Flats with their big drainage ditches everywhere, but the soil here is much richer and more productive than that of Ruawai.—Sgt.-Pilot Lyall, Ponsonby. © INSECTS There are all sorts of insects hopping about the light and keep dropping in my shirt. When we get a shower they all come in and invite their relations for about six generations back. It always seems to rain when we go to the pictures. We take a camp stretcher to sit on, which is O.K. till it rains, when it is like sitting in a bucket of water, and when they change reels we have to empty it out. but still it is not so bad to us old campaigners.—W.E. (Pacific). « DOODLE BUGS I have been in London twice and seen a lot of the damage that has been done by the doodle bugs. The people there are still taking it calmly. A couple of Aussies were drinking in a hotel when a V 2 landed close by. The Aussies were the only ones who made any remarks about it. Glasses were droped on the floor and beer was spilt everywhere. The locals only spoke to ask to have their glasses charged again and went on drinking and talking and laughing as though nothing had happened. The Aussies said they were great people. Yes, London can take it alright.—Sgt. R.A.W. (Auckland).

9 VICTORIA LEAGUE CLUB We stayed at the Victoria League Club near Hyde Park, and it was very nice there. The club is only for servicemen from the Empire, and it costs only 3/ per day to stay there. The accommodation consists of twoman rooms. The beds have clean sheets and pillow-cases and are very comfortable. There are plenty of baths and also a restaurant which provides really first-class meals. The club is very popular with New Zealanders and they patronise it even more than the Kiwi Club.—Sgt.-Pilot Lyall, Ponsonby. © LONDON CAFE TABLE I much prefer England's way of life to conditions in Trindad—the thronging crowds in the noisy streets, the lavishly-dressed women in the Continental cafes, Sunday in Piccadilly Corner House, warm with many lights, sleek-haired waiters dashing about to a background of a real Viennese orchestra lilting Strauss, statesmen and civil servants, naval officers and lovely girls, girls in incongruous uniforms, refugees trying to look Aryan in Homburg hats—everybody dines at Lyons Corner House. Anything can happen at a cafe table in London, and, best of all, it usually does.—A.O.P. (Karapiro). ® AMERICAN DINNER We met some Americans who had been in Auckland, and invited us home for dinner, and what a dinner! We started off with cocktails and iced water, then came a turkey, sitting in thick gravy, red cabbage and cranberries and several kinds of vegetables. Our plates were piled so high we did not think we could get through half, however, as we made a decent part of the meal disappear, our plates were piled up despite our protests. Then followed a dessert, and chocolate cake with wine and sweets. I never felt more like a stuffed sausage. I was glad to sit still and relax for an hour and. watch some movie pictures screened. —Sgt. R.A.W. (Auckland). ® BUZY-BOMBS There are a lot of people sleeping in the tubes again now that these buzy-bombs are making their presence felt. They seem to be mostly middle-aged and elderly people, who appear very bewildered over the whole business. It is very hard on them and seeing them really makes you realise what a sheltered life we've been leading in New Zealand for the past five years. A week ago two of us went down to London to see what we could see of these buzvbombs.' We were-in the city only 24 hours and in that time we neither saw nor heard a sign of one. When we were leaving in the train we saw a cloud of smoke and dust in the distance where one had just landed— that was all.—Sgt.-Pilot Lyall, Ponsonby.