Blue Light

The Blue Light : the unofficial organ of the 7th Field Ambulance in the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF) was a camp newspaper style publication started in November 1940 by the 7th Field Ambulance Press Committee with the co-operation from staff of The Fiji Times and Herald from Suva, Fiji during World War II.

The Blue Light ‘burst among us with the surprise of a shooting star’ with a ‘week’s mad rush and scramble’ (29 November 1940: 3). The tale of its beginnings is outlined in the first issue as follows:

‘One day someone said, ‘let’s have a unit paper’ and the next day, sanction was being applied for, the printer interviewed, possible advertisers contacted, heads scratched thinking out copy, layouts and ‘dummies’ discussed and the hundred and one other things connected with a paper being started into motion’ (29 November 1940: 3).

The Blue Light aimed to be a soldier’s newspaper that called for submissions from the soldiers themselves. It was agreed by the committee that profits made from the sale of The Blue Light would go towards ‘provisions of comforts for patients in the Military Hospitals in Fiji and to the provision of sports gear for the 7th Field Ambulance and other units’ (29 November 1940: 3).

Edited by Private D C Brown and Private Erik Cecil Leon (E C L) de Mauny, a London born journalist and writer who would go on to be a foundation member of the New Zealand Listener as well as a BBC foreign correspondent, the Blue Light featured world and New Zealand news, notices, advertisements, classifieds, letters to the editor and a quiz among other articles. The paper also took great care to avoid using any place names in order not to ‘antagonise the censors’ (29 November 1940: 2) and so it could be sent home.

However, the great care taken does not appear to have been enough, as The Blue Light became known for frankness and according to Lieutenant E V Sale due to ‘rather rigorous criticism in its second issue’ (Sale: 14) it was thereafter banned. According to K L Sandford orders were made on 14 December 1940 for all copies of The Blue Light to be ‘retained and destroyed’ (Sandford: 11).

References:

Sale, E V. Shovel, Sword and Scalpel: a Record of Service of Medical Units of the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force in the Pacific. The Third New Zealand Division Histories, edited by Lieutenant Colonel Oliver Arthur Gillespie. Reed Publishing (NZ) Ltd, 1945.

Sandford, K L. Story of the 34th. The Third New Zealand Division Histories, edited by Lieutenant Colonel Oliver Arthur Gillespie. Reed Publishing (NZ) Ltd, 1947.