CHRISTMAS TRADITION

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXIII, Issue 21, 23 December 1942, Page 2

CHRISTMAS TRADITION

TO BE KEPT BY SERVICES. (Official War Correspondent.) SOMEWHERE IN PACIFIC, Dec. 14 (By Official Airmail.) When New Zealand families sit down on Christmas Day lor the traditional noon-dav feast, their menfolk in the Pacific land, air, and sea forces will be trying hard to do the same. It will not be easy, hut special arrangements now in hand will ensure that the seasonal spirit will be with them, at least in part.

The Christmas tradition dies hard under the most adverse circumstances and air crews of the Ii.N.Z.A.F. squadrons will toast one another with hike-warm fruit juice as their bombers roar over island coasts and waters, and there will he little celebrations on the minesweepers rising and lulling on the Pacific swell. Among many an isolated group of New Zealanders there will be only the thoughts and wishes spoken and left unsaid to distinguish the occasion from any other day of the war. . On land everything possible is being clone to mark in an adequate way the fourth Christinas of the war. At this and other Pacific bases where New Zealand forces draw their rations from Americans, it is hoped that turkeys will he available. The plum puddings arc to be pooled from the patriotic parcels widely each man is expected to receive before Christmas, and unit canteens are endeavouring to build up a reserve of beer and cordials for the day. The grant of two shillings a head which is being made will probably he devoted largely to this, since there is little else on which it can be spent. Tile Army cooks will vie with one another in making it a memorable eating day and the officers will dine with the men in the met-s hulls and tents decorated with greenery and wild flowers. That will ho the probable extent and the most elaborate of the Christinas celebrations. At the other end of the sralc there is the picture of work stained men taking a few minutes off to sit around an open nil' cook-house and joke about other Christmases they have known and Christmases yet to come.