NEWS FOR WOMEN “DINKS” THANK WOMAN FOR WAR-TIME PARCELS

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27678, 7 June 1955, Page 2

NEWS FOR WOMEN “DINKS” THANK WOMAN FOR WAR-TIME PARCELS

(New Zealand Press Assorialionj

WELLINGTON, June 8. Eight hundred men attending the New Zealand Rifle Brigade's, reunion listened this morning to a 70-year-old woman while she told them why she had sent hundreds of gift parcels overseas to New Zealanders in two world wars, and had baked more than four tons of gingernuts for servicemen. '•You're all boys to me, you're just one big family—Maori and pakeha alike,” said Mrs H. M. Barnard, of Island Bay. In the First World War, she said, her sixth son had written to her describing the happy scenes that attended the; receipt of gift parcels from home in the trenches. Mrs Barnard told the "Dinks” that six of her sons served in the First World War, four on Gallipoli. The fifth son, she said, was a “Dink" himself, a member of the 2nd Battalion of the New Zealand Rifle Brigade, but he had not survived Passchendaele. In the First World War Mrs Barnard

belonged to a women’s club that sent parcels oversees regularly for the soldiers in France. In the Second World War she had a different set of “boys" and sent them gingernuts. “I couldn’t overlook the 'Dinks,’ ” * h ? .said today. "I've baked another oaten oiygingemuts for your reunion tonight.” Her “boys" gave her musical honours and called for three cheers after she addressed them. Among the "boys” she addressed were the Chief Justice (Sir Harold Barrowclough), a former battalion commander of the brigade; the chairman of directors of the National Airways Corporation (Sir Leonard Isitt), a former non-commissioned officer-Major-General Sir Herbert Hart, for--2? e JL b J i^J de commander; and Colonel R. St. J. Beere, senior brigade battalion commander. They also included Mr Sam Fnckleton, V.C., and a handful of holders of the Distinguished Conduct Medal.