INVALIDED HOME

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 31 December 1940, Page 8

INVALIDED HOME

SOLDIER’S COMPLAINTS UNSATISFACTORY TREATMENT SENT TO SOCIAL SECURITY Complaints about the treatment being meted out to soldiers invalided back from Egypt were made by Private F. C. A. Wilson, of the 27th Machine-gun Section of the First Echelon. Briefly, his complaints are that medical attention was very inadequate in Egypt, that the promises of every care in New Zealand are not being fulfilled, and that instead the Government is handing over the invalided men to the Social Security Department, which as yet does not seem to know what to do with them (states the “Herald”). Private Wilson, who is a married man, 25 years of age, has been sent back on acount of arthritis, which developed after route marches in Egypt Incidentally, he states that he had had a crushed foot before he enlisted. He says that in Egypt the medical officers simply told him that they could do nothing for him there, but that he would get every attention on his return to New Zealand. On the voyage back to Bombay on an Indian hospital ship he received the first real medical treatment he had been able to get, and he speaks very highly of the Indian doctors and nurses in whose care the invalided men were. At Poona, inland from Bombay, where some of them were for two months, they were again very well looked after, but at the TeolaV rest camp, further north, to which they were sent before reembarkation. the food and the conditions generally were bad and the men went back in health. “LEFT UP IN AIR” On arrival in Wellington on 3rd December, Private Wilson and others were sent to hospital for observation for a couple of days, and were then brought before representatives of the Social Security, Pensions and State Placement Departments. “Since then I have been home in Auckland running round for about a fortnight, trying to find out where I stand,” said Private Wilson. “The Government has washed its hands of us and left us up in the air, and we do not know what is going to happen to us.” He produced a paper which recorded that he was “permanently unfit for further military service overseas,” and that he had one week’s sick leave and three weeks’ privilege leave so that his provisional discharge became effective from 2nd January. He was granted travelling warrants, a £4 advance of pay and £7 10s mufti allowance. The paper adds: “Should you require hospital treatment after your leave expires, you should communicate with the local representative of the Social Security Department, who will then take charge of your case. DRASTIC PAY REDUCTION Private Wilson is strongly of the opinion that the Army should continue to be responsible for his treatment. He has been informed by the Social Security Department that he will be entitled to £1 a week from it, in place of the £4 11s he has been receiving in the Army—7s 6d a day pay, 3s allowance for wife, and 2s 6d allowance for being out of camp. He had previously been occupied as a labourer, farm labourer and a prison warder, but he is quite unfit for work of that kind at the present time.

In Egypt, Private Wilson said, he was led to understand he would get six months’ treatment on his return to New Zealand. “We don’t want pensions,” he said. “We want to get our health back, and then we can look after ourselves.”