Served Over 4 Years Overseas With Y.M.C.A.

Northern Advocate, 21 December 1945, Page 3

Served Over 4 Years Overseas With Y.M.C.A.

' (P.A.) WELLINGTON, This Day. Four and a-half yeai-s’ service as commissioner for the Young Men’s Christian Association with the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force in the Middle East has been the lot of Mr Basil Potter, who returned with the draft in the Mooltan. He left New Zealand with the Sixth Reinforcements and served in Egypt until October, 1943, going on to Italy; where he remained with the Division until October this year.

There were still tnree forces’ clubs in operation, Mr. Potter said, in Florence, Rome and Bdri, and of these Bari would be the last to close, as it was near the embarkation port. Florence was a big centre. There'were a cinema, dances every evening and a billiard room and barber’s shop. The Y.M.C.A. welfare branch was running a rest camp on the banks of the Arno River. Nearly all the troops were now quartered in buildings, many in hotels, but they were all “pretty well browned off” and longing to get back home. When Mr. Potter left the Middle East he handed over to Mr. R. Iv. Knapp. The mobile cinemas had gone inside for the winter ai?d were operating in buildings. A big one presented by the Motion Picture Exhibitors’ Association was operating in the heart of Florence and was accommodating - large crowds nightly. It was ’open to all Allied servicemen. UNIT FOR JAPAN Mr. Potter said arrangements were complete for a Y.M.C.A. unit to go with the New Zealand' force if it went to Japan. There would be two mobile cinemas, five mobile canteens, one truck and one jeep. Mr. Knapp would be in charge and was likefy also to be commissioner for the National Patriotic Fund Board. The residue of the equipment of the unit in the Middle East would be handed over to the National Patriotic Fund Board as it went out of use Avith the departure of the troops. It would be taken to Egypt for realisation. “There is a fair amount of unrest in Italy,” said Mr. Potter. “Much of it is larrikinism, for discipline has entirely broken down, and the fear of hunger also has something to do with it. There have been Communist processions in the north, in Milan and in Bologna. The unrest is really polical, Left against Right, and is not directed against the Allies.”