LADY FREYBERG

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24904, 18 June 1946, Page 2

LADY FREYBERG

NOTABLE WORK DURING. WAR Lady Freyberg, wife of New Zealand’s new Governor-General, begins her Vice-Regal duties with a considerable asset, for she is already well Known and admired by many thousands of New Zealand servicemen and women with whom she worked during the war. Her personal interest in the New Zealand girls with whom she worked will not easily be forgotten. Her keen concern for the welfare of those under her command has been summed up in a tribute paid to her some time ago by the director of the Young Women’s Christian Association war services in the Middle East and South-east Asia Commands (Miss Jean Begg). “She has dohe a Trojan job,” Miss Begg said. “She is a very gentle little English lady but she was determined that the New Zealand Club would hot only look nice, but would be really well kept.” From the time when she was in charge of the New Zealand Forces Club in Cairo, in 1941, until she left the Fernleaf Club in London, three months ago, Lady Freyberg devoted herself wholeheartedly to the interests and welfare of all ranks of the 2nd N.Z.E.F. She took particular trouble to help and cheer men in hospitals, and many were the tasks she undertook for them. She covered miles of Egyptian desert in search of New Zealanders who had been placed in British military hospitals. This work was in addition to her regular weekly visits to the New Zealand military hospitals to distribute comforts on behalf of the New Zealand Red Cross and Order of St. John. Her war work was recognised in 1943, when she was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire.

Lady Freyberg, who last visited New Zealand in 1939, has already, to a large extent, identified herself with New Zealanders. She is reported to have remarked onefe, “No. I am not a New Zealander, but I have done the next best thing and married* one.”

Lady Freyberg was formerly Miss Barbara Jekyll, a daughter of the late Colonel Sir Herbert Jekyll, K.C.M.G. She married Sir Bernard Freyberg in 1922.