ONE MEAL A DAY

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 350, 10 May 1928, Page 1

ONE MEAL A DAY

VETERAN OF TWO WARS FAMILY LIVES ON 7/6 A WEEK “Sometimes we have one meal a day of potatoes and bread ... I am burning furniture to keep the fire going . . . My family of five, three young children, is trying to live on 7s 6d a week.” A veteran of the South African and the Great War, who is a painter and paper-hanger by trade, has written to The Sun in desperation, declaring that he had had only three days’ work since Christmas, 1927. He has a wife and three children aged two, three and four-and-a-half years. He says that he is unable to do heavy manual labour, but he is anxious for light work as a timekeeper, gatekeeper, liftman, caretaker oi* at his trade. His active service amounted to eight years and nine months, and he was discharged with the rank of regimental sergeant-major (warrant officer!. The after-effects of service prevent him from taking heavy work, but he has no pension. “Last year I had six cows, a gig and horse, ducks, and all have been sold to allow us to live,” he writes. “I often wonder if the active service was worth anything. Far better had I found a grave in France. It is not the disabled man with a pension, who needs help, but the poor wretch who was lucky enough to go through the horrors of war and is now suffering from the effects. “This so-called relief work is O.K. for the able-bodied, but how about us poor devils that cannot do manual labour? We have to stand aside and starve. A prisoner in gaol gets three square meals a day, but we are lucky to get one.”