TRYING TIME

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 64, Issue 4536, 13 February 1942, Page 8

TRYING TIME

COMFORTS FOR FORCES THE LIBYAN CAMPAIGN The latest report received by the National Patriotic Fund Board from its commissioner in the Middle East, Lieutenant-Colonel F. Waite, covers the Christmas and New Year period. It shows that, in spite of the transport and other difficulties created by the Libyan campaign, Colonel Waite and those associated wuth him were able to make a wide distribution of gift parcels, cigarettes and tobacco, and other comforts to the New Zealand Forces in this extensive war theatre. “Before Christmas,” says Colonel Waite, “we had delivered one gift parcel and one tin of cigarette tobacco or five packets of cigarettes to each man in Alexandria and west of it. These got out to the Division in the field. We then had to devote our attention to the Christmas parcels and tobacco which had arrived from the Dominion by another ship. By Christmas Day we had delivered to the Division, the base, all hospitals, and to all New Zealand personnel in the A.I.F. whose addresses we could get, one Christmas parcel and another round of tobacco and cigarettes. At New Year we took stock and discovered that there were enough parcels to issue a second one, and cigarettes to the men at the base and to hospitals.” DELIVERING THE PARCELS Parcels were delivered to most places by motor truck, to others by air and by boat. For isolated New Zealand units at distant points it was necessary to send the parcels through the British Army Post Office. Colonel Waite comments that it must be difficult for people in New Zealand to realise what it means to attempt to deliver in war time, and through territory subject to enemy action, about 80,000 parcels, and the same number of rations of cigarettes and tobacco. Any list of locations made up one week was quite altered by the time the transport arrangements were complete. The report also refers to the allocation of another 50 battery radio sets which had arrived from the Dominion. Half of these were allotted to the Red Cross side of activities and the other half to the isolated units and the Division. No radios, says Colonel Waite, had been issued to officers’ or sergeants’ messes, all sets having gone to the men. Officers and sergeants bought their own. OUTSTANDING SERVICE Tribute is paid to the outstanding service given by the Y.M.C.A. during and after the Libyan battle as an expending agent of the National Patriotic Fund Board. The policy was to give everything away free during the engagement, and only to start selling again when the brigades returned to the advanced base. Generally, says Colonel Waite, this policy worked out satisfactorily, but it was necessarily expensive. By personal call and by letter appreciation was expressed to Colonel Waite by many New Zealand soldiers and airmen for the comforts they received. It is also of interest that an editorial in the “Egyptian Mail” of January 14th, records that the New Zealanders, “thanks to a generous and capably run Patriotic Fund,” were “particularly well endowed with comforts—edible and otherwise.” Owing to the vagaries of mails, the paper states, some other troops had not been so well supplied, but the members of New Zealand units had shared the contents of their parcels with men from other parts of the Empire, and they in turn had reciprocated when their parcels arrived. One particularly happy action, the paper records, was the “adoption” by New Zealanders of some Poles, with whom they shared their Christmas parcels. Incidents of this kind, the paper suggests, are a happy augury for the building of real peace.