Made Many AZ. Friends As W.V.S. Worker

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30738, 30 April 1965, Page 2

Made Many AZ. Friends As W.V.S. Worker

After 20 years in the British Women’s Voluntary Service, the visiting Hong Kong women’s golf champion, Miss Dodo Butler, has made many friends among New Zealanders. She met them as servicemen in Japan during the allied occupation and in Malaya, and as visitors to Hong Kong.

Miss Butler, who has won the women’s golf championship in Hong Kong for the last two years, was a competitor in the present Canterbury women’s championships.

It is her second visit to New Zealand in eight years. This time she intends to stay for two months before returning to England to see her home in Folkstone, Kent, again.

The W.V.S. was a welfare organisation attached to the armed services to provide recreation for personnel, Miss Butler said at the Shirley golf course yesterday. She joined the W.V.S. after World War II and was posted to Japan during the Allied occupation. “Conditions were rather rough at first, until I got settled,” she said. “I was at Buppu on Kyushu Island, a station entirely staffed by New Zealanders. “I have had quite a lot to do with the New Zealand forces in Japan and Malaya.” Sent to Singapore with the British forces in 1951, Miss Butler’s next move was to Kuala Lumpur during the peak time of the terrorist campaign. During the Korean War, she was posted back to Japan and ran a leave centre in Tokyo. From 1956 for a year she was in charge of the Commonwealth Club for Australians and New Zealanders in Penang, Malaya. CYPRUS, TRIPOLI

Next, her travels for the Women’s Voluntary Service took her to Cyprus and Tripoli with the British forces in 1961 and to Germany in 1962. For the last two years she has been with the British in Hong Kong. After her home leave in England she hopes to be posted again in the Far East.