PATRIOTIC PARCELS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 91, 14 October 1943, Page 3

PATRIOTIC PARCELS

SOME MUCH TRAVELLED The difficulty of ensuring that patriotic parcels reach individuals when they are detached from the main body of the New Zealand service personnel, particularly when they are serving in the Royal Navy or the Royal Air Force on distant stations, and the trouble that is taken in locating them, are illustrated from letters received recently. The letters were from New Zealanders in the Royal Navy and they wrote acknowledging with'gratitude the receipt of gift parcels, which, after doing the rounds, as it were, eventually had caught up with them. ' One of the men finally received his parcel in Bombay, India, after it had been to four different countries, including England. It was intended as a Christmas parcel, but it arrived six months late. However, that does not seem to have worried the sailor over much. He said in his letter that in spite of the distance it had travelled, the parcel was still in good condition. "It is a very nice feeling," he stated, "to know our people have not forgot-, ten us, and I can add that we New Zealanders over here are very proud of our people and our country, and do the English know it!" Through co-operation with the naval authorities the patriotic organisation is able to maintain reasonable contact with the New Zealanders overseas, even when they are detached personnel, but transfers can be made very rapidly in the Services, and once a parcel is on its way to a particular destination there is nothing much that can be done about readdressing it until it arrives there. Apart from underlining this fact, the letters that have arrived recently bear testimony not only to the pleasure that the- parcels give, but also to the gratitude that is felt in the knowledge that the parcel has been sent on behalf of the people of New Zealand. All the parcels for the naval men as well as for merchant seamen whose ships make Auckland their final port of call are packed by a sub-committee of the Auckland Metropolitan Patriotic Committee, of which Commander C. H. T. Palmer is the chairman. This committee is doing splendid-work.