MONTH ON RAIDER

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23863, 14 January 1941, Page 84

MONTH ON RAIDER

HOLMWOOD SURVIVORS

TREATMENT OF PRISONERS

SICK WOMAN'S EXPERIENCE

Clad in their neat blue unilorms, I'2 women members of the Red Cross Ambulance Section stood smartly to attention beside their motor-cars on an Auckland wharf yesterday morning to await the arrival of the Mariposa from Sydney with survivors from vessels attacked by enemy raiders who had been rescued from Emirati Island.

A passenger who appreciated their services was Mrs. R, C. Idiens, who was in great pain from tropical boils which disligured her right arm. So far no doctor has been able to find the germ which caused this distressing skin disease, which might have been caught aboard the Tokyo Maru, in which ship Mrs. Idiens spent a month after the Holmwood was sunk.

German Doctor's Aid Mrs. Idiens, with her husband and two children—Wendv, aged two, and Te Miria, aged about 12—-and her cousin. Miss Clara Hough, were passengers from the Chatham Islands in the Holmwood. The idiens family were bound for a new home at Christchureh, and Miss Hough intends to spend about two years in Wellington. Mrs. Idiens said that although she visited many doctors in Australia-, the German doctor aboard the prison ship was the only one who had been able to ease the pain in her arm. All the time she was on the raider she was well looked after, as were all the women and children. She and her family were given a cabin to themselves, and the other women, numbering about 00, slept on camp beds in the dining saloon and other large rooms. Although the food was rather terrible, there was plenty of it, and the prisoners fared exactly the same as the crew of the raider. Painful Ordeal

It was on Btnirnu Island that Mrs. 1 diens underwent the worst part of the .adventure. She was in very groat pain from lier arm so was given the only spare bed in the guest house on the island. Alt the other women slept on the floor, wrapped in rugs if they were lucky enough to have them. All the time Mrs. Jdiens was there she had to he her own nurse. It was not until Christmas Day, the last day of their enforced sojourn on the island, that a doctor versed in tropical diseases arrived, and he treated her before she left on a schooner with the rest of the women.

Te Miria also had much to say about the misery of life on the island, her chief woes being the prevalence of ants and the scarcity of food She considered she had been half starved during this period and much preferred life on the raider.