PATHOS OF A TROOPSHIP

Otaki Mail, Volume XXVIII, 9 February 1920, Page 4

PATHOS OF A TROOPSHIP

THE RUAHINE AT AUCKLAND.

Pathetic little incidents arc always to be seen whenever a troopship! returns to our shores (says the Auckland “Star”). Most pitiful are those patient women, in black, who stand wearily around the doors, waiting and waiting for permission to enter, so that they may meet someone who either returns or who comes to tell them that one returns no more. One such, on the arrival of the Rualiine, was broken to tears with waiting and weariness, when a thoughtful Harbour Board official opened the door and let her slip through; the thin old face and the shabby black told its own tale. Then the returning men and their wives began to leave the ship. With them came a red-coated nurse, bearing in her arms a very small baby. With tears in her eyes she told a sympathetic listener that the baby had lost its mother at birth, and she was fringing it out to its relatives in New Zealand. The baby gazed around with an unwinking stare; evidently it did not approve of its blood, a place with sugar showing signs of skyward flight and no coal in the offing. No amount of cajoling on the part of his friends altered his outlook till an old lady in heavy black held out her arms and addressed him as “Dear lamb.” Evidently h« approved of the undignified title, for with a chortle of joy he claimed acquaintance, and eyes were wet, as the little group told each other how ho would be loved in the home of his soldier father.