Complain Bitterly Of Conditions On Liner Packed With Troops

Northern Advocate, 5 September 1945, Page 6

Complain Bitterly Of Conditions On Liner Packed With Troops

(P.A.) • WELLINGTON, This Day. The liner Orion arrived today after a 27 days’ voyage from Liverpool, via Panama, with almost 5000 service personnel aboard, comprising 1337 New Zealand ex-prisoners of war and Australians and Royal Navy officers and men.

She was the ship on which 147 New Zealand prisoners and several R.N.Z.A.F. men refused to embark at Liverpool last month owing to alleged over-crowding. The New Zealanders said today that the officer who came to Liverpool to inspect the ship reported to General Kippenberger, who is in charge of the repatriation of prisoners, that accommodation was adequate, but when the men saw the accommodation about 70 R.N.Z.A.F. and more than 200 N.Z.E.F. men walked off. A lot of airmen and several soldiers returned, because their anxiety to get home outweighed their dislike of the conditions, but 147 other ranks refused to sail and were taken back to ihe reception centres. Monotonous Food Apparently the suggestion of a “walk off” was not widely known amongst the troops and many men who arrived asserted that they, too, would have left if they had known of it. mi! The men complained bitterly of conditions on the voyage. They were accommodated in the mess decks on the waterline and below it, eating and sleeping in the same quarters, slinging hammocks above the mess tables or sleeping on thin mattresses between the tables. Non-fraternisation orders as between officers and men restricted other ranks to an inadequate section of the lower promenade deck, open only at the sides and insufficient for exercise.

In the tropics it was possible to sleep on deck, but the heat in the mess deck made eating an ordeal, while in cold weather the mess-deck ventilation was inadequate for sleeping in crowded conditions.

The men said there were only two changes in the diet, fish to bully beef and bully beef to fish. The only bright spot in the menu was stuffed pork and Christmas pudding last Sunday. Canteen Prices High The men also complained bitterly about the tea in contrast with that which they could buy in the ship's canteen, as well as biscuits, chocolate and tinned food, using their own money. The prices of all commodities, except cigarettes and tobacco, at the canteen were far toe high. The ship was dry for the troops, although the crew had a wet canteen, and VJ Day, spent in the Atlantic, could not be celebrated as they would have wished. One troops space to accommodate 250 men had only three conveniences, cne out of order, three showers and nine wash basins. In another section for 500 men there were two conveniences and six basins. Or.e man said in a letter: “I have been a prisoner for a long time, but it shook me." « ‘TS