Rare Awards To Two Senior N.C.O.s

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31702, 11 June 1968, Page 12

Rare Awards To Two Senior N.C.O.s

Two senior noncommissioned officers will received rare decorations from the Chief of the General Staff (Major-General R. B. Dawson) at Burnham Military Camp today. They are Warrant Officer R. S. Stannard, who will be awarded a clasp to his Long Service and Good Conduct Medal—the first man in the Army to gain this distinction —and Warrant Officer C. M Schwass, the Regimental Sergeant-Major at Burnham, who will receive the Meritorious Service Medal.

This award may be held by. only 20 servicemen in the Regular Force at a time. Warrant Officer Stannard spent 19 years with the British Army before he joined the Royal New Zealand Army Ordinance Corps in 1950. He served on the North-West Frontier, was attached to the Indian Army and served in Malaya where in February, 1942, he was taken prisoner by the Japanese. As a prisoner of war he spent six months in Changi Gaol and worked on the Thailand-Burma railway for two years. In his last year as a prisoner he worked in shipbuilding yards in Japan. He was discharged from the British Army in India in 1949 and was awarded the' Long Service and Good Conduct Medal. Warrant Officer Stannard has spent all of his time in New Zealand in the Ordnance Corps at Burnham from where Cheapest Milk A survey of retail prices in some Commonwealth countries and the United States shows that the New Zealand price is well below the average, according to figures in the New Zealand Milk Board’s journal, “Town Milk” A quart of milk in New Zealand costs Bc. In South Africa, the next country on the list, it costs 14.2 c. in Britain 16.6 c: in Australia 17.6 c: in the United States 18.3 c; and in Canada as much as 19.5 c. Even if New Zealand milk was not. subsidised the retail price should not need to exceed 13c a quart .the journal says.

he was discharged on March 23 this year. He still works in the ordnance depot at the camo but as a civilian. Wararnt Officer Schwass is one of the longest serving warrant officers in the Army. In World War II he served with the 34th Infantry Battalion in the Solomon Islands When the 3rd New Zealand Infantry Division was disbanded he was costed to the 23rd Infantry Battalion in Italy. He served with this battalion from just before the Senio River breakthrough until the end of the war. As a regimental sergeant major, Warrant-Officer Schwass served at the Army schools at Trentham and Waiouru in the Coronation Contingent to Britain in 1953. the Central District Training Depot, Waiouru Camp, the Ist Battalion, Nelson, Marlborough, West Coast Regiment at Nelson, Ist Battalion, R.N.Z.I.R. at Terendak and the Ist Battalion Depot at Burnham. He was awarded the M.B.E. in 1954.