SOLDIERS’ PARCELS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 86, Issue 307, 30 December 1942, Page 3

SOLDIERS’ PARCELS

WRONG THINGS SENT PKAWNS, OYSTERS, BANANAS. Sydney, Dec. 23. An urgent appeal to the public to avoid sending perishable goods to soldier:.; by mail, and to pack everything strongly, was made b>’ Major H. V. Canavan, officer commanding the Base Post Office in Sydney. He said that, incredible articles were put in parcels for soldiers—prawns, oysters in the shell, cooked fowls, raw chops, chocolate, German sausage, eggs, raw and hard-boiled; apples, pears and bananas, wine, liniment, and peanut butter. “Even if these things would have ‘ke t' long enough for them to have been delivered, they were mostly packed in a way that they could never have been delivered fit for consumption," he remarked. Because of the foolishness of people who send wrong things, and send, them badly packed and insufficiently addressed, parcels sometimes never reach the soldiers. Sometimes only part, of the contents, carefully repacked, got to their destination. Many perishables have to be thrown away. The Army Base Post Office handles 2000 bags of parcels, letters and papers each day. “It is our job to get mails to the troops, and we will do it, provided the senders give us a chance,’’ Major Canavan remarked. “We have a service of which the Army can be justly proud, despatching any amount of mails on the day of receipt to anywhere in the Commonwealth and New Guinea.” A special staff, he said, was employed solely to correct insufficientlyaddressed correspondence and to rewrap broken parcels. When nothing can be done in the way of repacking parcels, the sender was notified that the contents had had to be destroyed. One parcel received at the Base Post Office contained the remnants of a 21b fruit cake, two cakes of chocolate. a box of matches, two packets of cigarettes, three cartons of nuts, one near, and a dozen raw eggs wrapped in a single sheet, of brown paper. The mess was indescribable.