“GASPERS”

New Zealand Times, Volume XLVII, Issue 10898, 12 May 1921, Page 3

“GASPERS”

DIGGERS AND CIGARETTES. DARKERS DAYS RECALLED. Army cigarettes, or “gaspers,” as they were known to Thomas Atkins, were the subject of a charge laid against four members of the New Zealand Artillery at the Supreme Court yesterday. It transpired, during the hearing of the case, that 200,000 cigarettes had been sent to the destructor. The fact will recall to many old-time diggers days when cigarettes were less plentiful. Curiously enough, different campaigns in the field were associated, more or less closely, with special brands of cigarettes. the quality of the cigarettes-often, reflected the prospects of the army in the war. For instance, when war broke out, and the man in the street thought that it would be over in three monhs, cigarettes of good quality were supplied to recruits. Many of these were private donations from patriotic firms, one of which presented 1,000,000 cigarettes to one colonial force. Gallipoli days will be recalled, just as much by the paucity of cigarettes as by the uncertainty that marked the progress of the campaign. The void was felt all the more keenly by the troops of the Australian and New Zealand armies, fresh from the enjoyment of the luxurious and soothing brands of Turkish and Egyptian that- a wellpaybook enabled them to purchase. The notoriety which some of the inferior brands New Zealanders smoked at Anzac earned had evidently reached New Zealand, as Mr Justice Hosking referred to one of them as “not a very high-class brand,” amid approving laughter. Wheli the heavy seas prevented vessels coming into Anzac Gove, recourse was had to emergency stores on the beach, of a type of naval twist tobacco that soldiers still remember with bitter feelings. It was issued with cigarette papers; its pungency was believed to be due to the consignment having been torpedoed several times. But good days followed bad, and just about the time the New Zealanders were sailing Hill 971, the farthest point reached by British troops at Anzac, there were intermittent supplies of moderately good cigarettes, brought by the Y.M.C.A. from Sir lan Hamilton’s headquarters at the island of Imbros. The darkest days of Gallipoli, as far as cigarettes went, were during the blizzards of November, when 8000 men were rapidly evacuated from the Peninsula with frozen feet, and the best were those last anxious days,, when the operations attending the evacuation from Gallipoli—December 20th, 1915—were carried out. If the army marched well on its stomach, it fought well on its cigarettes. With all the stress of hard fighting, in the campaigns of France and Flanders, there was a regular supply of cigarettes, and of better quality than was received hitherto. Supplies came from many sources. The supply and transport services of the British Expeditionary Force guaranteed a, regular issue, and there were besides other channels, including the Y.M.C.A.* and comforts funds, to whioh diggers had reason to be grateful for cigarettes. Home gifts came to hand with increasing regularity as the postal services improved; a mail-card to London brought consignments to the more fastidious, and in the last months of the war it may he said that, if the digger fought hard, he smoked hard, too, to his own comfort and relish.