BED-RIDDEN GIRL

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21313, 27 January 1944, Page 3

BED-RIDDEN GIRL

WARHAWK’S MASCOT

PLANE BEARS NAME

AIRMAN’S PEN-FRIENDSHIP

(N.Z.E.F. Official News Service.) 10 a.m.) NEW GEORGIA, Jan. 26. Nineteen-year-old Gloria Lyons lies n the Chrivtchurch Hospital with überculosis of the spine. Patient but heerful, she faces a stay there of two /ears.

At a forward Pacific base of the R.N.Z.A.F. stands another “Gloria Lyons,” a sleek Warhawk fighter, and m the pilot’s cockpit a small typevritten note is pasted. “To the pilot. Gloria Lyons is our No. 4 Servicing Jnit mascot. She is doing a long erm in hospital and we want both lur Glorias to last a long time. No. 4 IU„ Dec., 1943.”

Four young New Zealand airmen of Vo. 4 Servicing Unit attached to a Vew Zealand fighter wing sat in their tent one evening reading mail which had come in that day. For one there vere seven or eight letters, another ilso received a good batch, but for he other two it was a lean mail day. lo they got their heads together and lot long afterwards this advertisement appeared in a Christchurch newspaper: ‘Two lonely young airmen wish to correspond with two smart young 'adies 18-21, view friendship. Interests lancing, music and sport. Photo if possible.” Among replies came one rather dif"dently from Gloria Lyons on behalf )f herself and her fellow patients. A few more letters broke the ice and now a regular correspondence flows. She tells the airman to whom she writes of what goes on at home in New Zealand, he describes to her what life is like in the tropics. It is amazing how things get round n these camps but the airman, did not have to stand chipping from his mates. Instead the story caught their imagination; and when a Warhawk with the identification letter G was passing through the maintenance line the idea blossomed in some head of naming the fighter after the sporting, bed-ridden girl and adopting her as the unit’s mascot.

So, while Gloria Lyons of- the Pacific front line takes the air with her colleagues to beat the Japanese out of the skies, her namesake ‘follows their fortunes keenly and hopefully and the thoughts of the beys of No. 4 Servicing Unit are wth the welfare of both.