DESCRIPTION “ABSURD”

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19371, 8 July 1937, Page 6

DESCRIPTION “ABSURD”

SHABBY N.Z. UNIFORMS CORONATION CONTINGENT (Per Press Association.) WHANGAREI, this day. To describe the uniforms of the New Zealand Coronation contingent as ill-fitting and shabby was absurd, said Major H. G. Carruth, of Whangarei, who commanded the contingent on the return trip. The British line regiments wore blue for the first time and the general public and the men preferred khaki, which all the Dominion and colonial troops wore, he continued. The uniforms were fitted hv tailors and alterations made to secure a good fit.

He heard no suggestion in England that the contingent did not look smart. The English people remembered the New Zealanders during the war years, when they always wore khaki, and it was an insult to the N.Z.E.F. to say that the uniforms were shabby. The men were a fine body and were a credit to the Dominion. They realised what they had to live up to, arid appreciated all that was done for them.

The controversy which has developed on the equipment of the New Zealand Coronation Contingent was mentioned by a pressman to-day to Staff Sergeant-Major L. R. Stichbury, Gisborne. Replying to a question on this point, Mr. Stichbury, who was a member of the contingent, said that by comparison with some other contingents, the New Zealanders did not sparkle in the matter of dfess. Nevertheless, the public seemed to realise that the uniform was the service dress of the citizen army, and identical with that in which the New Zealand Expeditionary Force went to the assistance of the Mother Country during the Great War. From the point of view of the contingenters, the uniform represented a link with the Expeditionary Force, and so strong was the public memory in England of the N.Z.E.F. that every man in the contingent was proud of the association. Sergeant-Major Stichbury mentioned that one reason for the loose fit of the uniforms on. some of the men was that the training in Trentham and on the boat, added to the effect of travel through the tropics, reduced substantially the weight of many of the older members.