COMFORTS FROM N.Z.

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 40, 16 August 1944, Page 4

COMFORTS FROM N.Z.

REPATRIATED PRISONERS

The New Zealand patriotic organisation will have an important part to play in the provision of extra comforts for repatriated New Zealand prisoners of war on their arrival in the United Kingdom after the armistice. The secretary of the National Patriotic Fund Board, Mr. G. A. Hayden, said yesterday afternoon that preparations for this work had been in hand for some months.

Arrangements had been made, said Mr. Hayden, for Chaplain Major S. C. Read, Taieri, Dunedin, to proceed from the Middle East to England to act as the board's commissioner there. Colonel Waite, patriotic commissioner in the Middle East, would also visit the United Kingdom in connection with the service to be provided for the repatriated New Zealanders. The New Zealand V.M.C.A., a large expending agent of the National Patriotic Fund Board, would also be represented, its. personnel being headedby Mr. Cassels, Riverton, who had served as a V.M.C.A. secretary in Fiji, New Caledonia, and the Middle East.

While the men were waiting in the camps which were to be established to accommodate them in England till the time came for their departure for New Zealand, they would be supplied with patriotic comforts from New Zealand. These would include such items as foodstuffs, which they" would receive in addition to their camp rations, and also sports gear. The initial expenditure from the patriotic funds for the Welfare of the repatriated prisoners would be at least £20,000.