GIFTS OF CHEER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 January 1944, Page 3

GIFTS OF CHEER

NORWEGIAN AIRME|M FLAY SANTA CLAUS. CHRISTMAS PARCELS DROPPED IN HOMELAND. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, January 12. Airmen manning planes of the Royal Norwegian Air Force spent the day just before Christmas flying back over their homeland to deliver ,to their countrymen gifts of cheer in the form of coffee, chocolate, cigarettes and tobacco. The story has only just been released so that the Norwegians have had time to dispose of the gifts. One member of the staff of the Norwegian Information Office, who was in one of the aircraft, said they flow low toward the Norwegian coast, the aircraft loaded to capacity with sacks of Christmas parcels. They could see people waving to them. In one place two boys in a field threw themselves to the ground as they came roaring over, but when the sacks did not explode they got up and stood with their eyes fixed on the planes till they disappeared. At another place a sack was dropped some distance from a woman standing outside her house and a second sack was dropped an equal distance on the other side. She ran a few yards toward the first and then changed her mind and ran toward the second, but turned again to the first. The dropping of the sacks was later interrupted by the arrival of a German plane, which,, however, was shaken off and the Norwegians returned to England safely.