THE SOLDIERS' MAIL

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2504, 3 July 1915, Page 7

THE SOLDIERS' MAIL

£Ai PAPER FROM - BOMB 3

JHUGE OUTWARD DISPAJ<?Bf - . FOR EGYPT- ; ; , 32,000 NEWSPAPERS 1 / ■ Last August thero wont forth' from aii office in London a call.; Wo in New Zealand heard it, and we understood. •''Men!" was the call—"Send . menl" With :men wo answered. Many days now our men have been at the war. Longer still they' havo been away -from home. Sickness is incidental to campaigning: hot necessafily so, perhaps, but the military'regard it as and have nover succeeded in avoiding it. .Wounds, too, aro incidents- of' war. -Fortunately, convalescence one day, overtakes both the bounded and the sick—not all, but most of thoni. ■ Picture one of our men—ono of your .friends—lying in bed awaiting recovery from a slight injury, or just get about a little after an illness.-. For days, may be for weeks, ho has lain in this or that far-off hospital, his, vision, bounded by.the walls of his .ward, his thoughts thousands of miles , away—in . New Zealand.; Nothing . breaks the monotony of his slow recovery- • Day and night follow each other on their inoxorable round. Week fol- ■ : lows week. . He. is: very patient, andhe tries to he cheerful. He must try to be cheerful for the sako.of tho fellow in the next bed, and out of gratitude to the moil and women who iiave nursed him,back towards health. But still his thoughts wander back across the Pacific. and.he finds himself in New Zealand once again. Ho sees you going along as you used to do before ho went, away .to light for you. He likes to think you are happy. Thinkiug of .you is almost his sole occupation, and he wonders if .you ever think of him. Surely, yes. But if-you really do, why no 'letter this long while, and nevor a newspaper. Ho ■; counts the months he has been away." He counts the weeks sice last, lie heard' of New Zealand. How much shorter would the stay in hospital have seerued had he "a i'ow New - Zealand papers, a book, or, a magazine. He ponders it over, arid it hurts him to think that you might have forgotten, to post him a paper from home. - Some invalids have returned to. New Zealand. One of them spent many .weeks in hospital. The. monotony was dreadful. 'The soldier can l describe it ■best: —. . - ■ • "We were in the-hospital for some weeks: I thought it was years. We had ' nothing to do all day,\ so those of us who wore well enough used to form up, and march up and down the building. iWe would march awhile, and then have a ' spell. Then we would march again,, and so on. , There was not; a solitary,'' other' thing we could' find to do. We; had nothing to read the, whole time we were there, except; one day one single! New: Zealand, newspaper got in -somehow.'. '> We all' read it. -The follows nearly ate it. When, it got round to me, it, was so thumbed and crumpled through all the men having had.it that patches of it. were ' scarcely decipherable. I' read it froiri start to finish.'' I read it over and,over again, whenever I could get it. I, knew it . off by heart, news 'arid advertis'e- • ments. -That is'.the only paper we saw all the, time, and' without anything to read, a man has to just lie there,: and -wait! tillhe's discharged." There are more invalided soldiers ill hospital now thani there iwere at the time ,of which the returned:-, soldier speaks. They find it ctslopely as ho found it. May be they are without papers; and maybe they think of home, and' : wonder if : we think' of them. ' If from where they lie they could see into the mail room of the General Post Office, , they would have their answer. They .woiild see ,a row of mail sacks branded "Wellington Battalion," "Wellington Mounted Regiment," "Canterbury Battalion," "Field Artillery,", arid'so on; ■They would notice men constantly at work sorting papers and letters into these bags—a small staff handling only soldiers' mails. They would gather that in a month over 100,000 newsapers addressed to them and their comrades through the General POst Office at Wellington. One outward; mail-day they would see a mountain of mail—all addressed to them; and they would observe big motor-lorries running load after load away to the mail boat by ■the wharf. Yesterday morning, could -they have looked in at the-mail-room door, they would have noticed 1300 cubio feet of letters and papers in. one heap on the floor. -They mounted up,to over seven feet in height', and they occupied 17 feet by. 11 feet' of - floor. 6pace. Altogether there, were about 160 sacks of newspapers, and as about 200 are squeezed into every sack, New Zealand's contribution of newspapers to its'.soldiers is '32,000 this week. What a sight for the hospital patients ? But will they ever hold those papers in their hands, and devour them line by line? Month upon month New Zealand has been pouring out reading matter for itp men at the front, bub the men have not always received it. The fault is not at this end, s where the Postal Department holds sway it is .-vt the other end, where the military' command.' At the G.P.O. special arrangements have been made to sort and dispatch mail for tho front, but at the other, end adequate arrangements can not, 'apparently, be made to handle, the mail received. The Activo Service Postal 'Department is accommodated in a tent in which the little staff does its best, but its task is a heavy one. Even the mail for Trentham camp, which i 3 much smaller than the Egypt mail, could not he handled'in a tent so small than at iiight the Postal Department has to pile it up in order that "tho depart-' ment" may find room to stretch itself .put for a sleep. Besides newspapers, large quantities Of letters-are sent from the G.P.O; to 'Egypt every week. Also, the parcels number about 1000. Parcels are sent to-London in strong- wliite-pine boxes, ,nnd from London they are reshipped to - Egypt,' or Malta, or wherever their ,owners maybe. Thisroiuid-aboutcourse lis taken because 'New Zealand has no arrangement with the P. and 0. Liue to carry parcels mail by the Suez route, but before long a satisfactory arrangement may be made. -However, so far as "is known, here, the' delay resulting from indirect transportation is not .great. . But the mailt thing is that we aro 'sending these papers regularly—we are not forgetting those who are fighting for us. It would be bad enough for tho men not to get their newspapers ; it would be worse if wo really forgot to' send them. Wo hero have realised what those few shots of printed matter mean to the -men at the front. Our Postal Department has realised it. The military in Egypt must de.•iso_ somo means of ensuring that our , loldiers get that treasure which they UOndJy describe as - A Paper from Home. '