"THIS FREEDOM"

New Zealand Herald, Volume 81, Issue 25084, 23 December 1944, Page 3

"THIS FREEDOM"

CHIP OFF THE OLD BLOCK /iUitrah'an; "Glad to see you, Tommy; but mind you, 1 still tbJnk Larwood was over the —Sydney Bulletin t'eAN sandy-haired Squadron-Leader Beadon, of Surrey, England, ,t*jn the mess at a Air Force liberator bomber squadron base in he saw from an uncomfortable kif in fl corner nlfU '° ' l,m sac^ nostalgic, for this mcr; was his cr nf had selected the green curtains, .(Mired the circular bomb-fin oases to funDort the bar, requisitioned the cane Zirs pleaded with the carpenter to make'the tables, hung the Esquirish nkuros in th«' most artistic places. p It Was Too Much

y eS what he saw in this his own Jj'wns enough to make any selfrespecting Englishman nostalgic. pilots navigators, gunners, radio mfrs tors—all with "Australia" on ftrir shoulders, monopolised the bar, best : cane chairs, the latest magaB £kßadiftns, New Zealanders and South 'African* had second best of everything 'and Englishmen wearing R.A.F. ffines got what was left. It was too much for Squadron-Leader B«adon, of Surrey. England. . Sitting that night in a rickety chair fa his dim corner with a six-months-old magazine < on his knees he made the secretly called a conference of his tadl? outnumbered countrymen and

flew the next day to Calcutta, visited a tailor, returned to base, and then was born out of nostalgic desperation and self-protection the only "free English movement" in the world. Each- Englishman who entered the Dominions-dominated H.A.F. mess wore on his right shoulder the neatlyembroidered words in red, "Free English," and even the bar orderly, Leading. Aircraftman Taffy Humphreys, of Wales, appeared labelled "Free Welsh" on both shoulders. "We could not stand it any longer," Boadon told me. "Wherever we looked in our own mess we saw the words 'Australia' or 'Canada' or 'New Zealand,' and we began to got an inferiority complex. It got so bad that we few Englishmen sometimes gathered in the corners and sang 'God Save the King,' and once we all went outside and quietly and sadly Will Always be an England.' " —-Hon MrKie, Sydney Dally Telegraph War Correspondent. 'The Voluminous Marshal" TN my latest budget of Parisian x papers I And a copy of Combat containing an account of the carry-ing-on of the famous Sovres porcelain manufacture during the German occupation. The Nazi authorities, it is stated, placed enormous orders with the management—for large numbers of swastika-decorated ashtrays among other things—allowing no others to be executed. The most important customer was Goering, whose singular fancy it was to have every one of his innumerable medals and decorations copied in littlo porcelain plaques. » "The voluminous Marshal"—l like that phrase—had an immense cabinot made, each drawer containing a number of his decorations with tno corresponding plaques. What will happen to this collection now is, I suppose, part of the question of what will happen to the marshal. Perhaps the Carnavalet Museum, which specialises in curiosities of Parisian history, might be interested. —Peterborough in the Daily Telegraph Short Circuit A SCOTTISH prisoner of war asked "'*■ one of his Gorman guards with whom lie was on easy terms what he was going to do when the war was over. "I shall get on my bicycle," the latter replied with ardour, "and ride right round the frontiers of the Greater Reich." "Ay," observed the Scotsman reflectively, "and what'll ye do in the afternoon"? —Jnnus in the Spectator