GENERAL NEWS

Waikato Times, Volume 90, Issue 14050, 1 May 1919, Page 7

GENERAL NEWS

One of tlic repatriation difficulties which has already asserted itself in Marlborough concerns a number of men who have found themselves unable to continue their pre-war occupations after discharge (states the Marlborough Express). Men who have been discharged on account of organic trouble find the heavy work which they engaged in previously detrimental to their health, and a demand for light situations has therefore boon created. Reporting to tbo meeting of the Blenheim Repatriation Committee, the repatriation officer mentioned that cjuite a number of carpenters, ploughmen, farm hands, and cabinetmakers could be placed in the district, but employers generally had not so far indicated many opportunities for light work.

A correspondent writes to the London Evening News of March s:—“ The casualty statistics given to the public have not got beyond general totals so far, but a New Zealand medical friend gives me some interesting details concerning their losses. Among a total of 55,000 casualties in the New Zealand force, including 15,000 killed, there has only been the surprisingly small number of 20 cases of blindness. The ‘ limbleks ’ cases also have been remarkably few in number, when it is borne in mind the loss of any portion of a limb, from a hand or foot upwards, brings a case under this classification. Losses of fingers or toes do not count as limblessness, but practically everything above this does. Of such cases the New Zealand casualties include only between 800 and 850, which works out at something under l-i per cent. AH these men, Earn told, are undergoing special educational courses wherever their has made a continuance of their fire-war occupation impossible.

“The average magazine war story is amusing,” said General March in a recent interview. “It’s amusing, I mean, in its inaccuracy. Yes, the average magazine story is as inaccurate as the story of the doughboy who rushed fiom the front line trenches with his cheeks puffed out and his mouth tightly closed. He hopped into a lorry without a word, and waved his arms toward .the rear in a frantic way. Tie’s crazy, poor feller,’ said the driver. ‘Shell shock, of course. It’s drove him as crazy as a bedbug.’ And the lorry set off. The driver’s idea was to convey the stricken doughboy to the nearest hospital. The patient still sat with his cheeks puffed out and lips tightly closed, while he now- held his nose with one hand as well. ‘Crazy,’ muttered the driver. But it turned out that the doughboy wasn’t crazy at all. He was employed in the gas defence, and had been sent forward to a recently raided trench for a sample of the German’s latest brand of phosgene.”