PATRIOTIC PARCELS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 05, Issue 88, 7 August 1942, Page 5

PATRIOTIC PARCELS

CRITICISM CONTRADICTED N.Z. OFFICER'S VIEWS '•Any suggestion that patriotic parcels are not being delivered is incorrc-t. Wherever it has been humanly possible every man received at least two parcels at Christmas lime. This accounts for many tens of thousands for a start-off," states a letter from a New Zealand officer and which has been forwarded by his wife to the Wellington Provincial Patriotic Council. "The boys in the desert received for the most part far more than this," adds the writer. "I have spoken to at least ten of these cliaj ji. none of whom received less than three. It is only natural that anjrone who was a prisoner in Bardia, for instance, perhaps did not get his parcel at Christmas, but you can take it as a certainty that over 99 per cent of the men in the N.Z.E.F. received their full quota of patriotic parcels eventually, and,, in fad, a splendid job was done by those doing the distributing. "I had. occasion two months ago to have a man up on the mat for writing home that he had received absolutely nothing, when I personally handed him tAvo patriotic parcels ten days before. The complaint about having to buy the free gifts at the canteens is just too contemptible to. discuss. "The Patriotic Fund is doing a great job of work (our Christmas dinner, for instance), not to fnention sports gear, the recreational huts, mobile cinemas, mobile canteens, the New Zealand Club in Cairo, and hundreds of things which the soldier does not realise conic from the Patriotic Fund."