SOUTHLAND SOLDIERS PRISONERS

Southland Times, Issue 24546, 22 September 1941, Page 6

SOUTHLAND SOLDIERS PRISONERS

LETTER FROM DOCTOR The latest news of Southland officers and soldiers who are prisoners of war in Greece is contained in a letter from Maor G. H. Thomson, N.Z.M.C., to his wife at New Plymouth. He was taken prisoner of war in Greece. He mentions the Rev. R. J. Griffiths, formerly of Waimate, and Dr Stewart, of Gore. “This is the third hospital I have had to organize Yom scratch, and it is the most magnificent, being a large marble and granite building in the centre of the city,” he writes. Though he does not name the city he is in, it is assumed Major Thomson is still at Athens. His last letter was written from Kokinia Hospital, near Athens, where in a professional capacity he had cared for New Zealanders wounded in Crete. He wrote: “One is working too hard to notice days or dates and the days seem all too short. I have three R.A.M.C. surgeons, two anaesthetists, a dental officer, two quartermasters, and two padres, one of them Griffiths, of Waimate, South Canterbury; and Alf. Slater, Wellington, Stewart (Gore), Hamish Neales, who relieved me when I was at Helwan, Stevenson Wright (Wellington) and two physicians and an Australian E.N.T. surgeon. I have 20 New Zealand personnel, 83 R.A.M.C. and 20 Australians. I also control a Greek hospital in the same block.

Mrs M. Ratley, of Invercargill, has received advice through the International Red Cross, Geneva, that her son, Private P. Amos, is a prisoner of war in a hospital at Athens. He was wounded in the leg and is suffering from a fractured femur.