COOKERY CLASSES FOR SOLDIERS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 14051, 22 July 1916, Page 6

COOKERY CLASSES FOR SOLDIERS

LETTERS FROM MISS HIGGENS. Letters received from Miss Higgens at the School of Cookery, Carlton Camp, Bulkeley, Alexandria, report all well, i and the work greatly appreciated by I both officers and men. Tlie fourth lot of men have just completed their course, ■ and Miss Higg e "s has now the fifth, sist i in trainmg. She has been able to ar- ! range for Sunday sorvicea for the men, and these ai'e much valued and well attended. Both the Sunday, servioes and the evening work which she would like to takej in hand are greatly hampered 'through' lack; of a piano. Tho Y.M.C.A. have big tents and do a big work at Cairo, but apparently there is nothing for the men at Alexandria. She writes : "The school is now a purely military institution, and General B -. wrote to me saying he hoped I would continue my good work. He hopes we may get in- at least five moro batches of men, which means five more months, as well as a few weeks' interval between tine dismissal of one lot and . the arrival of the next. We began a fresh lot of students (the fifth) on June Ist, and up to . the present have about 98. We do not want to exceed 100 this time. They seem a very nice lot of men, and today, between lessons, they have been, i naming their tents; that is, making little j banks round them and putting the name on the bank in white stones. For instance, one they have called "Stockport Villa," another "Anzac," another "Advance Australia," another "Scotland for Ever," and so on. I am also to have ' a garden and herb-bed, so we are com- ! ing on, aren't Ave? People are kind in | writing and sending papers^ Please tell • Mr. Fromm those he sends me are much appreciated by the men. I am trying hard to get them a piano. Oh, if only some of those rich farmers of the Gisborne district knew how much it would ,be valued I'm sure they would cable I the money for one. The men love a and it would help to keep them in camp. I am sure I often wish New Zealand was not so far away. Our last students left on May 24, and we took a fortnight's holiday. In that time I took the opportunity of being inoculated for para-typhoid and dysentery. Major F did it, and ordered m© to bed for 48 hours. I wasn't a bit ill, but thought it best to obey him, as if people walk about after it they are often very ill.. You would hardly believe the awful noise the frogs ( make, and the place swarms with creepy crawlies-^-black ants as big as blue-bottles, little ants into everything, lizards-' all over the^ place, enormous cockroaches black and brown, crickets, mosquitoes, and flies. However hot you are you must sleep with a mosquito curtain over you, and there' • are also other descendants of the plagues of Egypt." \