HOSPITAL SHIP ARRIVES

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXI, Issue 126, 29 April 1941, Page 5

HOSPITAL SHIP ARRIVES

PARTY OF 240 MEN. EXPERIENCES AT HOME. (Press Assn.) WELLINGTON, Apr. 29. A party ol' 240 members of the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force were landed from Jti.s Majesty’s hospital ship Somersetshire to-Uay. 84 being members of the iSecond Echelon in Britain and the rest from the Middle East. The majority of the latter were picked up at Suez,' but some at Sydney from another ship. The men are from all parts of New Zealand. The Somersetshire, which is a former Bibby Line troopship, is under Lt.Col. J. W. Hirst, who has with him a number of members of the R.A.M.C., Matron E. Townsend, and 13 nursing sisters, all of the R.A.M.C. A few of the returning soldiers were wounded in bombings. One is a 6hell shock case, but the majority are sickness cases. Several were injured in accidents. mainly through motor-cycling. A man returning from England said they received a thorough training at Aldershot before going to the Channel coast to meet the German invasion. London had been out of bounds to them, but several had paid unofficial visits. One man said that while the damage to London was great it was not aa extensive as most people thought. The bombing was largely confined to the East End. Another who visited London commented that some of the destruction would do good, because it had removed buildings that should have been replaced before. When asked for his impressions of the stand Britain was making, another soldier declared the British could never he beaten. If anything, they were more determined than ever. This man said the German planes came over in hundreds. He saw a squadrons of bombers attacked and in two minutes all were down. One fell from almost above them, and when it was near the ground it flattened out and shot straight at them. “We scattered in all directions,” lie said, “but it hit the ground half a mile away.” The Prime Minister (Rt. Hon. P. Fraser) and the Minister of Defence (Hon. F. Jones) visited the ship and welcomed the men.