AMONG THE TROOPS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25393, 26 November 1943, Page 4

AMONG THE TROOPS

CHEERFUL INFORMALITY GOVERNOR-GENERAL’S TOUR A SOUTH PACIFIC BASE. Nov. 19. The cheerful informality of the Governor-General (Sir Cyril Newall) captured the imagination of every New Zealander whom his Excellency met on Mis Pacific tour. Wherever the familiar figure of a New Zealand sailor, soldier, or airman was seen there Sir Cyril was to be found, shaking hands with grimy mechanics, chatting with men who prepare meals in stifling cookhouses; climbing on to the fuselage of an aeroplane to wish a pilot good luck; sitting with men in mess halls; waving to crowds of servicemen from the rickety seat of a bumping jeep. “ You’ll all want to ask me when you are going home,” his Excellency said at some of the camps he visited. “ The answer is ‘ I don’t know.’ The war is going well. We’ve got to get on with it and we’ve got to stay here. I wish lie added smilingly, amid a burst of laughter, “ I could stay here with you. ’ His Excellency was quick to see through a “stage trick” at an Air Force station, where a lad was painting the Rising Sun on a headquarters board to notify another success by a member of a fighter squadron. It had been planned that the painting should be in progress when Sir Cyril stopped in front of the headquarters, but twice during the morning the Governer nassed by, and the painter had laboriously to stretch out the time required to do the job. When, an hour later, his Excellency did stop and look at the board he asked the lad: “.How long have you been painting this. ~ ,m " barrassed, the boy stuttered: Ei—quite a time, sir.” ‘ Yes, I thought so, replied his Excellency, “I saw you at it ages ago, didn’t I? ” A patient at a convalescent depot was struggling with a bow and arrow, and had landed his shafts anywhere but on the sacking target. Here, let me have a try,” said his Excellency. “ How do you work it? ” But he did not need to be told, and he hit the target at his first attempt. His Excellency’s friendly words to the island natives, who had crowded to the New Zealand camps to see the Governor-General, brought . smiles to v/ar-painted faces. The chief of the Supato tribe was down at tne beach with a native warrior to welcome the Governor-General Cricket Cap” he has been nicknamed by the New Zealanders, as he wears a Canterbury Cricket Club cap given him by a New Zealand missionary. To-day he had left his cap at home, but he had brought many of his tribe in for the occasion,. and Sir Cyril’s happy greetings to them were reciprocated with broad smiles of pleasure. His Excellency spoke for some time with those who could converse in English.