SOLDIERS' COMFORTS AT THE FRONT

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2722, 17 March 1916, Page 6

SOLDIERS' COMFORTS AT THE FRONT

CALLOUS WASTE ALLEGED

Gunner E. 0. Murdoch, of Gisborno, who loft Now Zealand with tho Second Itoinl'orceincnts, is ono of tho mon who Imvo Been and suffered in the great war. Ho was shot in tho leg in July of last year, and bogged to bo allowod to go back to his beloved battery nt Gallipoli. lie was allowed to do so by a medical man who told him that ho was not "lit," but who could not resist tho man's strenuous pleading. So back ho limped to" tho trenches, and got oil fairly well until the icy hlnst of winter struck tho Peninsula, and tho trenches were invaded by snow, ice, and hail, and tho men's feot bccanio frost-bitten as thoy stood to their arms. The intense cold got to Gunner Murdoch's old wound, and his feot wore frost-bitten to such an oxlont that ho had to bo. evacuated towards tho end of November.

lie. was treated for his gunshot' wound at I'ont de Koubbeh Hospital, at Cairo, and it was .whilst there that ho saw what ho terms the shocking waste with regard to "comforts" sent to tho men from those at home. About ton of comforts, that must have cost a mint of money, wore stackod, ho said, just outside tli'p main entrance of tho hospital, inside the gates, but outsjdc tho building, said . G'innor Murdoch. "They wore all addressed to the Matron of the hospital, but days and weeks passed and they were never touched, though, God knows, we could have done with them. It was bad enough to see them standing in'the sun day after day, but just before Christmas we had a week's rain, the first for about forty years, so they said, and the cases and their contents were thoroughly soaked. Then out camo the sun again blazing hot, and you could sco tho melted chocolates oozing through tho cracks in a dirty brown stream. Of course, pretty well everything was spoiled, and I thought what a waste of money and effort the unsightly heap presented. Some of the cases wcro from Waihi; others from Gisborne, where I came from, and I determined that as soon as I got back to Gisborne I would see the committee, and try and arrange a better system of sending stuff to Ejrvpt. The chaps that had stuff sent to tnem personally usually got it, hut when it was addressed to an official thore was trouble."

Why, didn't you ask the Matron about it?

■ "Why—because she would probably have told me to mind my own business and that the stuff was her's. Anyhow, I'm c;oing to see about it when I pet to Gisbome, you take my word for it!"