Gunners Help To Build School

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30980, 9 February 1966, Page 7

Gunners Help To Build School

(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.) BIEN HO A (South Vietnam), Feb. 7. New Zealand artillerymen are helping to construct a school in a village near their base in Bien Hoa province.

They are working jointly on the project with American and Vietnamese troops. The village, Tan Mai, at present has only one school—a single-classroom building. It caters for only 100 of the estimated 1000 children in the village. The school the New Zealanders are working on will have two class-rooms in a 48ft-by-24ft block. The gunners have surveyed the fifth of an acre site for the school. Today they are to begin clearing the section of its dense undergrowth. The New Zealanders hope to borrow a bulldozer from Royal Australian Regiment engineers based at Bien Hoa to level the section. Once the classroom block is erected, the gunners will dig a water well. Later they will build toilets, a gymnasium and a playground. Today Lieutenant Brian Gore, of Waiorua, and Sergeant J. Benyon, of Christ-

church, who is a medical staff man, will hold their first “sick parade” for villagers in the hamlet, which is without medical facilities. Their visit follows a request from the village chief. He asked the New Zealanders to send medical staff to the village once a week to assist with health problems. In other civic action, the battery is continuing to supply surplus rations to the nuns of a Roman Catholic convent near the base. The nuns—including a New Zealander, Mother Florida—distribute the canned food to villagers in their area.