SERVICEMEN DESCRIBE TRIP AS PLEASURE CRUISE

Chronicle (Levin), 5 April 1946, Page 5

SERVICEMEN DESCRIBE TRIP AS PLEASURE CRUISE

— Press Association

By Telegraph-

WELLINGTON, April 4. "A pleasnre cruise," was how Servicemen who arrived from the United Kingdom and the Middle East on the Arawa descrihed the passage. The draft comprised 188 army and navy personnel and 13 dependants, and 44 R.N.Z.A.F. personnel from England. The ship also carried 242 civilian passengers, embarked at: Melbourne. The Dominion troops are the last large party of returning Service personnel. The troops were treated very weil, said Colonel H. E. Gilbert, D.S.O., O.B.E., officer commanding the troops. "The troop decks were very good indeed; they were some of the best 1 have seen and there was very littie overcrowding," he said. "We had a number of Australians on hoard from London to Melbourne and held our own against them in every way, in physicai exercises and sports." • Less than a dozen New Zealana troops now remain in Italy, attached to rear headquarters at Casserta, to attend to any washing-up duties. A few personnel of the Graves Concentratioib. and Graves Registration remain in Italy. Conditions on the ship were criticised by 200 odd civilians embarked at Melbourne and quartered on the trobp deck. However, in the same space where the civilians spent 44 days crossing the Tasman, 500 Australian servicemen hau been quartered on the voyage from London to Melbourne and without the luxury of soft mattresses issued to civilians. .