KNITS FOR SOLDIERS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 64, 12 September 1942, Page 10

KNITS FOR SOLDIERS

NINETY-SIX-YEAR-OLD

PATRIOT

For more than 18 months, Mrs. Elizabeth Carey, Masterton, has played fairy godmother to the troops in New Zealand's largest inland camp, headquarters of the New Zealand Tank Brigade. Others play similar roles, but not in their 96th year. Week after week, despite her years, Mrs. Carey has sent a parcel of knitted wear to the camp commandant for distribution, mittens, berets, balaclavas, and the like, all her own handiwork. Hardly a week passes without the arrival at the camp of a parcel containing up to half a dozen items. Mrs. Carey buys all her own wool, and each article is turned out with meticulous skill. The mittens which she knits are particularly popular, as

they are. made full length with a slit across the palm, so that they can be used either as fingerless gloves covering the whole hand, or as mittens, according, to the work the user is doing. When it was learned in camp that Mrs. Carey had been, presented with a seven-volume'edition of Gibbon's "Decline and-Fall of the Roman Empire," on her 95th birthday, it was feared that ■ she might be distracted from her. work for the troops. But the fears were groundless. It would take more than seven monumental volumes ■of Gibbon to upset her equanimity and quiet sense of humour, and her unselfish contributions to the comfort of the men in this camp have continued to arrive regularly for distribution to.a widening circle of appreciative recipients.