SENTIMENT AND WAR

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXIV, Issue 49, 26 January 1944, Page 2

SENTIMENT AND WAR

NAMING A FIGHTER. (Official News Service.) (Rec. 1.30 p.m.) NEW GEORGIA. Nineteeu-year-old Gloria Lyons lies in the Christchurch Public Hospital with tuberculosis of the spine. 1 atient but cheerful, she faces a stay there .of two years. At a forward Pacific base of the R.N'.Z.A.F. stands another “Gloria Lyons”, a sleek Warhawk fighter, and in the pilot s cockpit a small typewritten note is pasted: “To the pilot. Gloria Lyons is our 4 S.U. mascot. She is doing a long term in hospital, and we want both our Glorias to last a long time. 4 S.U., Dec., ’43.” Four young New Zealand airmen oi the No. 4 servicing unit attached to the New Zealand fighter wing &at in their tent one evening reading the mail which had conic in that day. For one there were seven or eight letters, another also received a good batch, but for the other two it was a lean mail day. So they got their heads together, and not long afterwards this advertisement appeared in a Christchurch newspaper: J) v 0 lonely airmen wish to correspond with two smart young ladies, 18-21, 'lew friendship. Interests, dancing, music, sport. Photo, if pccsiblc.” Among the replies came one rather diffidontlv from Gloria Lyons on behalf of herself and a fellow patient. A few more letters broke the ice and now regular correspondence flows. She t clthe airman to whom she writes of what goes on at home in Now Zealand, he discribcs to her what life is like in the tropito. It is amazing how tilings get round in thcee 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 tlio 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 heat the Japanese out of the skies, her namesake follows their fortunes keenly and hopefully, and the thoughts of the boys of No, 4 servicing unit arc with the welfare of both.