SLEEPING OUT

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 52, Issue 32306, 30 August 1943, Page 2

SLEEPING OUT

THE A.W.A.S. DOESN’T MIND! PROCEEDING ON COMBAT ZONE When the advance guard of Austra- ! lian Women’s Army Service went ! north, they slept for the first few I weeks on the ground. They had a r waterproof sheet and three blankets each and gum-trees for overhead cover. I They arrived during the northern ! winter, expected a sunny climate, and got temperatures as low as 32deg. A Melbourne girl said: “It was just like home to me, but the Queenslanders shivered.”

The girls didn’t mind the discomforts. They were attached to an A.I.F. unit which had served in the Middle East, and realised their “hardships” were mild to what the boys went through. The A.W.A.S. are now comfortably housed in Army huts. They are in a combat zone, and assist in administration, training, signals, intelligence, stores, quartering and movements. There are some drivers, and five of the A.I.F. officers’ messes in

the area have A.W.A.S. cooks and kitchen orderlies.

The A.W.A.S. troops sleep 20 in a large dormintory, with an A.W.A.S. sergeant in charge of each. They have tropical beds with straw palliasses, a pillow, and the army issue of three blankets. A newer type of hut is being planned for A.W.A.S. in tropical zones. This will be partitioned inside, with two girls to each cubicle. Until such times as the dormitories are equipped according to standard regulations, the A.W.A.S. devise their own amenities. Lacking cupboards and wardrobes, they hang their clothes on lengths of piping or rope. As bedside tables were kerosene and packing cases painted and draped with chintz and dyed sugar bags. And always there are pictures of the home folks, of brothers, fiances and husbands, invariably in the uniforms of the fighting forces.