RETURNED MEN

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVIII, Issue 23375, 5 December 1945, Page 4

RETURNED MEN

Re-establishment As Civilians Educating The Public Educating the public in the proper treatment of returned servicemen who, while not suffering from warneurosis, nevertheless are finding it difficult to establish themselves once more as civilians, has been under consideration by the Timaru Junior Chamber of Commerce, which has distributed to every home in Timaru copies of an address delivered recently in Auckland by Dr. W. Reeve, of the Services Hospital, Rotorua. The tenor of Dr Reeve’s talk may be summarised by his opening remarks, which were: “When a serviceman returns to this country and takes off his uniform and we put him into ‘civvy’ clothes, that does not make him a civilian. Far from it! The reverse process has to be initiated. He has to be unmade as a soldier, remade as a civilian and finally remade as a civilian worker. It takes a long time to make a man a soldier. In many cases it will take a long time to make that man into a civilian again, and I want you to understand that in this matter time is an important element." Commenting on the interest taken by the Timaru Junior Chamber in this aspect of rehabilitation, the chairman of the Chamber’s Rehabilitation Subcommittee (Mr H. R. Preston) said yesterday that in distributing Dr Reeve’s address to every household, the Junior Chamber desired to draw the attention of the public to the many difficulties confronting men now being discharged from the services. “We realise that organisations such as ours find it difficult to give concrete assistance to returned servicemen who cannot readjust themselves to civilian ways of life,” he added, “but we do feel that if we can tell the public all about the many difficulties these men are up against, we are at least doing something. That is why we procured a verbatim copy of Dr Reeve and had printed copies distributed.”

Dr Reeve’s talk covered countless phases of the problem of rehabilitating those servicemen whose form of neurosis could not be cured by medical attention. “Perhaps he does riot behave well; he is unpunctual and careless,” Dr Reeve stated. “He slips away from the parties; he does not turn up at the parties. He is longing for his cobbers—the men who speak the same language and think the same thoughts. He spends as little time as possible with his people, and he slips off to his cobbers. He’ goes to the pub, and he drinks too much. He shows no gratitude at home for things they have done for him. He has that feeling inside him that the world or life owes him something. He is not prepared to give gratitude. He feels it is vain, it is not definite; but deep within him he feels that life owes him something.” In distributing copies of Dr Reeve’s address, the Junior Chamber of Commerce was assisted by the Life Boys, who are members of the junior division of the South Canterbury Boys’ Brigade.