WANGANUI BOY'S LETTER.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15133, 30 January 1917, Page 5

WANGANUI BOY'S LETTER.

TRAINING CAMP LIFE. -WINTER IN ENGLAND. Writing to the Mayor of Wanganui (Mr C, E. Mackay) from thp New Zealand camp at Oodford, Wiltshire, England, a- Wanganui hoy named George McKay* who was well known on the waterfront, says: “We are very near Xmas now,' and the boys in this camp (something about 2500) will btT very well provided for on Christmas Day. I am on the Q.M.’s staff here, and we are putting on a splendid dinner. It cost 2s 6d per head over the usual ration allowance, so yon can guess that it will be something decent. . >.,■ . : It’s‘getting very odd here now, and a great many of the hoys are feeling it very severely indeed. It ,is pitiful to hear the coughing that is going x on all round tne camps. Two out of every three have colds, and most of them are of a very bad nature and will take a lot to get rid of. The rain we had some time hack was terrible. Rain day after day, and slush and mud 'everywhere. Nowthe frcsts have set in on top of that, and it . is just a shame the way it freezes. It has not thawed for over a week now, not even at noon. The cold, has not troubled me so far. Everything that is possible is done for the boys. We are in very good wooden huts; with a coke stove and as much coke as they want. Four days a week they get hot meals and hot soup at 8 p.m. every day. The other two days they get two hot meals a day, so they are well provided for in that respect. They have five heavy woollen blankets and a straw palliase with as much straw as they like to put in it. I have been here just about four months ago, and am anchored here as, long as T care to stay. 1 tried hard to get away for the first couple of months, hut I could not do it. When the warm weather comes on again I will get away somehow. There are plenty to take my place here who aro not so fit for active service as I am. . .

I hope to do a bit better later on, and it will not, be my fault if I do not succeed. I am in excellent health and as fit as a fiddle. I have a staff of 16 men under me, and we are kept pretty busy at times. The only fault is that tho place is so isolated and quiet except for an occasional concert now and again. , Very few of our boys are to get leave for Christmas or New Year, only 10 per cent, on ’ each occasion.' There is considerable disappointment over it, but we have to put up with it. Leave of all description is being cut down since the reorganisation in the House. The enormous on the railways is the cause of it. . . . “I do not see much chance of us getting home again before the latter end of next year (1917) at earliest. We are winning slowly but surely, and we have a long way to go yet. Many of our boys will ’-ever return, and many who do will be sally broken down. The winter he> - -3 k going to play havoc with the constitutions of a great many. Wanganui must be very short of able-bodied men now, so it is sad to think what it will he in another six months from now even." In conclusion, Q.M.S. McKay asks the Mayor give his kind regards to all his old friends in Wanganui.