NOTES AND COMMENTS

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 20, 19 October 1943, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS

To many New Zealand people at home here the recital of his experiences as a prisoner of war in Italy, given in his Sunday evening broadcast by the Bishop of Waiapu, the Rt. Rev. G. V. Gerard, must have been of great personal interest. News from the prisoner-of-war camps is in the circumstances very scanty, and it is enlightening to have their conditions described in greater detail when opportunity offers. Of particular interest was the great store —stressed by the speaker—set hjj our soldiers under durance on the gift parcels sent to them from their homeland through the agency of the Red Cross. “Had it not been for these parcels,” said the Bishop, “many of the prisoners would have suffered in health, and might not have survived.” The comforts conveyed to the’grateful recipients are psychological as well as material. The gift parcel is a symbol of their country’s remembrance of them, and sympathy with them, in their lot, which even under the most favourable conditions —and these do not always obtain —must nevertheless be one of at least some hardship and restriction. The arrival of these messages in kind must be immensely cheering to men who nq doubt are chafing against the restraints of their captivity. Although there have been various cheering reports of the manner in which they have organized activities both studious and recreative to offset the restrictions imposed by present camp conditions, and usefully occupy their time, the red-letter days of their routine existence are undoubtedly the arrival of letters and gift parcels from home. This good work must be kept up with undirninislted zeal from the New Zealand end. * * * »

Although the Allied operations against the German “Volturno River line” in Italy are not yet complete, and the full story of them is therefore yet to be told, it is already plain that a particularly fine piece of workon the part of the Navy and British troops has been largely responsible for breaking up the strong enemy position. After withdrawing from the Naples area the Germans hastened to their prepared positions along the Volturno. It was obvious from their communiques that they set much store on this line; indeed, it. was spoken of as being in the nature of a stronghold. The Fifth Army lost no time In moving to attack the line from the south, and that attack has been powerful and well sustained. But it has been very greatly assisted—and its cost probably much reduced—by the bold British stroke carried out by means of a landing from the sea north of the line, and therefore in the rear of its defenders. Seemingly that landing was holly contested, but the British force consolidated itself and, in spite of the enemy’s desperate resistance, pushed him back. The position thus created is that the force behind the Volturno has become one arm of a pincer movement, while the Fifth Army is the other arm. Between those two arms the line is crumbling.