BARRACK LIFE

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 423, 3 May 1937, Page 5

BARRACK LIFE

AUSTRALIANS DISSATISFIED Butter Put on Menu After Protest London, April 10. Murmurs of discontent have been filtering out of Wellington Barracks, where the Australian Coronation troops are quartered. Here is one man’s “grouse” reported by a London paper interviewer this week: “To say that we are disappointed over our trip is to put it mildly. We are fed up to the teeth, and N.C.O’s. are as disgruntled as the privates. “When we arrived we were sent to Wellington Barracks. We soon found why your War Secretary, Mr Duff Cooper, can’t get all the recruits he wants. “We were put on the same rations as the Guardsmen. We had no butter, only margarine, and a menu that would make a wallaby wall-eyed. We complained loudly, and now we have butter. To-night for tea, the last meal of the day, there are rubbery bits of stuff called saveloys. That is why we are out of barracks.” The men expected something of a holiday, except during the actual Coronation duties. “But,” said the private, “we have exactly the same time off as the Guardsmen, with parades, guards, and pickets, except that we have special permission to stay out longer after “lights-out.” It is only fair to add that the officers indignantly deny that grumbling is widespread in the detachment.