SANDY’S CORNER

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 89, Issue 269, 14 November 1945, Page 4

SANDY’S CORNER

LONG MEETINGS. Wanganui Pressmen are hoping that the City Council will call for tenders soon to install bunks in the Council Chamber. Meetings are getting longer and longer. Soon we'll need to take up a subscription to provide the councillors and staff with blankets. A long, long time ago. when Mr. Armstrong was Mayor, a meeting lasted 15 minutes. Mr. Hope Gibbons had one lasting five. That happens so rarely now that what happened then seems as long ago as the days of William the Conquero' Last night's meeting lasted until this morning. BUGLERS ARE LIKE MOAS. Wanted: A bugler! Tliis was the "moan” which went up from a meeting of the committee of tile Wanganui Returned Servicemen's Golf Committee the other day. Ch, yes, "Kiwis” moan just as much as "Diggers” did in the last war, but it is something unique to hear them wanting a bugler. In our old davs the most hated man in the Army was not the sergeant-major, it was the bugler. Perhaps that is why buglers, like moas, are extinct. If they are not. then they are fast becoming a vanishing breed. There isn't a returned serviceman nugler to be had in Wanganui these days—Wally Nicholls excepted, and h e has a prior engagement for next Saturday, and so can't oblige the golfers who want “The Last Post” and “Reveille” played. If there is a real, live bugler with th* necessary qualifications, he could perhaps get Fred Hill out of his misery. Back in the days of the Main Bodv Fred did not speak to. the ougler, he hated him so muc’* And a good many more of us were the same. The bugler's fiendish glee in blowing "Defaulters" was nothing to the ire he roused in the breasts of men when he blew “Reveille” on the morning after the night before, fin this war, apparently, except at base camp, there were ro such things as buglers. It is a pity. Perhaps Cassino would have fallen earlier had there been a bugler to blow the silvered notes of the “Charge!" "On, on ye noble Kiwis, to victory or to death," would have sounded much better, we suppose, than some irate voice saying: "Go in and eat the ar.d for - sake don't get your tank caught in that —— gully on the —— left." Is there one bugler left? If there is the golfing lads will give him the full welcome any bugler deserves next Saturday,