VISIT TO TRENTHAM

New Zealand Times, Volume XL, Issue 9092, 10 July 1915, Page 8

VISIT TO TRENTHAM

A WOMAN’S STORY AFTER A FORTNIGHT AT THE CAMP. (Special to “N.Z. Times.”) AUCKLAND. July 9. “Trentham is truly terrible.” So remarked a young lady who returned to Auckland yesterday after spending a fortnight in Wellington. She has five relatives in training, three of whom are ill. and in order to bo near them she resided with friends at Trontham, the house at which she stayed being within a 'stone’s throw of the main camp. In this way she was daily in touch with Trentham life, and her observations, from a woman’s viewpoint, are interesting. PANDEMONIUM OF COUGHING. “Tho first thing that struck me,” she said, “was the perfect pandemonium of coughing. Thousands of men seemed to be coughing all at once, and it was quite eerie, just about dark, to hear each detachment of men coming into camp from their day’s training,, all coughing, coughing, coughing. Not the. sort of subdued cough you hear dn a tram car but a cough that came from deep down. At night time the noise of men coughing _was just awful. And most of them seemed to be in damp clothes all the time. The site of the camp itself is quite six inches deep in mud, and the men have to bo tramped for miles up into the hills to do their training. Most of them are marched out a distance of at least three miles before they find suitable ground, and as they have to return to camp twice for meals, they often cover 12 miles per day just in walking between headquarters and training ground. NEVER DRY. ' “It seems to be,” continued the young lady, “that the men never got their clothes dry. I have seen a statement made by the Minister that each man is supplied with two pairs of boots. The Minister evidently believes this to be so, or ho would _ not have made the statement. Rut it is not true, for I know men whose boots have never been dry since they went into camp. They have their own boots, as well as the regulation boots, but their own they are hot allowed to wear, and so for days they have gone round with wracking coughs and wet boots. Their overcoats, too, are not waterproof, and they seem ever to be saturated. In their tents they are not allowed to hang wet clothes up to dry. Nothing may be hung to the tentpoles. And so in the mornings they get up and, dress in wet clothes, which have been dumped down in a heap overnight. In the hutments they fare no better. I think they cram one hundred men .into each hut, and in addition there are one hundred wet suits, and. one hundred wet overcoats, all steaming. Small wonder that the men had colds. I have seen these men —coughing brigades I could not help calling them —lying full length in the grass, which was wet enough to soak through my strongest shoes. That was during' their manoeuvres. I was assured by an officer'at Trentham that it was no exaggeration to say that 5000 men at Trentham are suffering from colds.. And in the majority of cases they are really heavy colds—the kind which leave the men susceptible to every kind of chest disease. OVERHEARD IN A TAXI.

“I had not been at Trentham three days before I realised that the whole thing was far more terrible that I had ever dreamed possible. I felt that things were bad, blit. I said to myself, as people are saying in Auckland now: ’They’re going to he soldiers, and they’ve got to learn to rough, it.’ Realisation came when I was gSing in a taxi-cab from the camp to the railway station. A girl friend was with mo and two Wellington doctors were also in the car. One sat next me, and the other in the front seat. I could not help hearing what they nad to say. and what they did say startled me. They talked of conditions at Trentham as a scandal, and I gathered from what they said that men were seriously ill who had no right to be seriously ill, and that one .hoy was going to die who had no, right to die. They were absolutely indignant about what they had seen, and perhaps their warmth accounted for their speaking so frely on professional matters before strangers. NO ROOM FOR SICK MEN.

“Next day, and on succeeding days I took a keener interest in all I saw "Very sick men w(jre lying on bare floors, rolled up in .blankets. Outside the medical officer’s tent I saw men waiting, 50 at a time, for examination. Many of them were waiting in drizzling rain, because the tent was not big enough to hold. them. all. and the sight of one poor fellow I will never forget He looked a mere boy—a country looking boy—and he tried to keep him self warm in a wet blanket. Anyone coui’d see he was desperately ill, but he had to wait ever so long for his turn. I could have cried over him. He belonged to a section from which 33 men were ordered to hospital. Eighteen of the 23 ploughed through mild and rain to the improvised hospital, and 18 of. that number returned, wet through, because they had .been told that there was no room in the institution for them. This boy was one of them. So they curled up in their damp clothing to await what fate had in store for them. RIVER DIPS AND MEASLES.

“And I was told that lots of these hoys, feeling 'groggy,’ as they put it, all the time, don’t discover they have measles, very often, until they are on the brink of a cold water dip in the Hutt river. Twice a week they are marched to the river. It is not compulsory that they should swim, hut it is that they should wash their_ feet. Imagine a man, just on the point of measles, jumping into an ice-cold river! Months and months ago the men were promised hot showers, but, like the Trentham base 1 hospital’, for which the public long ago subscribed the money, there is still no sign of realisation.”