N.Z. TROOPS MAROONED IN AUSTRALIA BEING FLOWN HOME

Wanganui Chronicle, 26 February 1947, Page 4

N.Z. TROOPS MAROONED IN AUSTRALIA BEING FLOWN HOME

(P.A.) Auckland, Feb. 24. Chartered by the New Zealand Government in response to an appeal from Dominion servicemen marooned in Australia when on repatriation from Japan, the trans-Australian Airlines Skymaster Thomas Mitchell arrived at Whenuapai from Sydney with 48 passengers. Some of the servicemen had been stranded in Australia for nearly two months, and, with no other means of transport in sight, made their appeal to the Minister of Finance (Mr. Nash) when he recently visited the Commonwealth. A second aircraft of the same company will arrive at Whenuapai on Thursday afternoon with the remainder of the waiting New Zealanders. Nearly half the draft, were medical cases- They included Captain W. M Winter, of Mount Eden' who travelled on a stretcher with injuries to his spine receeived when he fell from a building in Japan. He was under the care of Sister A. M. M. Lennan, of Devonport, and he was taken by ambulance to a military annexe on arrival.

Three officers, Major N. Searanke, of Otorolwiga. officer commanding the Maori sffiiadron of the Divisional Cavalry Regiment, and Captain A. W. Kay and Lieutenant A. H. Reynolds, of Auckland, returned to take the course for permanent commissions at Army School of Instruction, Trentham. The remaining members of the draft included long service personnel among the last of the force which originally moved from Italy to Japan, and one Royal New Zealand Air Foiee officer, Flight Lieutenant W. P. N- Clarke, of Grimmerburn. Central Otago, who was accompanied by his wife and child. Flight Lieutenant Clarke was being repatriated from the United Kingdom when he became marooned in Australia.