HOME-SICKNESS

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 101, 30 April 1914, Page 7

HOME-SICKNESS

TERRITORIALS' COMPLAINT AT KOWAI ISOLATED CASES OF ILLNESS. NO NEED TO SCARE ANXIOUS MOTHERS. (BT TBLKORAPH— SPECIAL TO THE POSTjI CHBISTCfItffiCH, This Day. »_ Ten weary-looking Territorials came into the city by the train from Springfield last night, and a small knot of people who had gathered on the station expecting to see crowds of pneumoniastricken citizen soldiers were decidedly disappointed. "Most of them are merely home sick..' 1 said a brusque officer to a, reportq)! who asked for details of the cases. "They have had colds and so on, and they expressed a desire to go home, and here they are," Asked as to the sickness reported to be prevalent in camp, the officer laughed. "There have been plenty of sore throats," he said, "but anyone would expect that in the conditions Hinder which the camp opened. The weather has been truly shocking,' and the men Iravo had plenty of cause to complain, but in sixteen years' experience I have, never seen 'a camp in which both discipline and good-fellowship have been so well displayed. To-day I left the camp to go' down and meet General Hamilton, nnd when I came away about thirty of the men on the sick list were playing football with the orderlies. As lor these fellows" — and he pointed with a smile to a group of Territorials sorting luggage out— "they wanted to come home, so they got ill." The men _ who arrived by the train certainly did not app.ear to be the worse for thoir illness* and the majority of them shouldered their kits and walked off. One man/ who was carried by two comrades, had had a nasty kick on the thigh and vfas taken to the Hospital, and another who was brought down in a stretcher in the guard's van was showing symptoms of measles, which had necessitated his early removal from the camp. Along with two others suffci-ing from colds he was taken to the Hospital. The really sick men .were in charge of Sur-geon-Major Fenwick, who absolutely pooh-poohed any idea of general sickness at the camp when he was asked about the matter. "It is all very well to scare anxious mothers." he said, "by reports of sickness, but I can assure you that the troops as A whole are in the best of health, and are thoroughly cheerful, and the-sc fellows wilfi very soon be all right," he concluded, as tiie ambulance I vans drove away.