WITH THE TROOPS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 171, 10 June 1940, Page 6

WITH THE TROOPS

THE WORK OF THE Y.M.C.A.

(N.Z.E.F. Official News Service)

Yellow sand stretched under sliim mering heat waves for miles on every side. No place could have seemed more remote than this tract of desert -to which the battalion had moved to play its part in the four days' exercises of the -Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force. Yet the impossible was happening. Tired, dusty men in khaki were soothing parched throats with cool drinks, replenishing lean tobacco pouches and enjoying fresh cigarettes. All these miles from the canteen -amenities of their camp, they had found an oasis— or* more correctly, an oasis had found them. Ploughing through heavy sand and bumping over roadless wastes, a truck was passing from unit to unit, laden with tobacco and refreshments and all the other "essential luxuries" of a soldier's life. The Y.M.C.A. was on the Job again, rendering still another form of service as it filled a new kind of need. In the estimation of the grate ful men who satisfied their wants at its truck, more points were added to the already high reputation which the association had earned for its work in the New Zealand camp. Shortage of "Accommodation. Shortage of accommodation held up many of the Y.M.G.A.*s projects in the first weeks of occupation of the camp, but three marquees functioned day and night from the time of the-arrival of the force in Egypt. It was realised that because of the facilities established by the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes throughout the camp, it was not the place of the association to proVide a canteen service. The Y.M.C.A therefore concentrated its organisation on social activities of many kinds. A general Y.M.C.A. centre is now partially open. It has three sections —the first, a hut for games, refresh ments and social activities; the second, a hut for writing and reading; the third, an open-air auditorium which will be suitable for concerts, boxing, wrestling and basketball matches and other forms of entertainment and recreation. Hospitals are visited regularly and comforts distributed on behalf of the National Patriotic Fund Board. There are no records and figures to unfold the never-ending tale of personal services rendered to the men bj r the association—intimate problems solved, material help given, letters written for sick men—ways of service that have earned the gratitude of scores ( soldiers. Co-operation. Full co-operation exists between the work of the association and that of the padres. Responsibilities and fields of activity has been so defined as to avoid overlapping, with the Y.M.C.A. devoting its attention to social and the padres to specifically spiritual work. The special room in the Y.M.C.A. hut is free to the padres to use as they wish. Padres and secretaries alternate in the leading of Sunday even ing song services and nightly vespers, and occasionally at church parades.