Y.M.C.A. AT WORK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 June 1940, Page 8

Y.M.C.A. AT WORK

ACTIVITIES IN EGYPT [ CATERING FOR MEN’S NEEDS. FACILITIES IN MANY DIRECTIONS (NZEF Official News Service.) MAY 14. Yellow sand stretched under shimmering heat waves for miles on every side. No place could have seemed more remote than this tract of desert to which the battalion had moved to play its part in the four days eS SP r " cises of the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force. Yet the impossible was happening. Tired, dusty men in khaki were soothing parched throats with cool drinks, replenishing lean tobacco pouches and enjoying fresh cigarettes. All these miles from the canteen amenities , of their camp, they had found an oasis—or more correctly, an oasis had found them. Ploughing through heavy sand and bumping over roadless wastes, a truck was passing from unit to unit, laden with tobacco and refreshments and all the other “essential luxuries” of a soldier’s life.

The Y.M.C.A. was on the job again, rendering still another form of service as it filled a new kind of need. In the estimation of the grateful men who satisfied their wants at its truck, more points were added to the already high reputation which the association had earned for its work in the New Zealand camp. Shortage of accommodation held up many of the Y.M.C.A.’s projects in the first weeks of occupation of the camp, but three marquees functioned day and night from the time of the arrival of the force in Egypt. It was realised that because of the facilities established by the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes throughout the camp, it was not the place of . the association to provide a canteen service. The Y.M.C.A. therefore concentrated its organisation on social activities of many kinds. Opportunities were not lacking. The complete novelty of the country was one of them—and so a series of talks on subjects such as the Pyramids, the Dynasties and centres of ancient civilisation filled a big tent to overflowing every week. Hundreds of soldiers took part in walking . tours about Cairo, and even Arabic classes were formed. The Y.M.C.A. tents became a popular rendezvous which a host of men visited regularly to read, write and chat. Magazines and newspapers were well thumbed, and notepaper, envelopes, pens and ink, supplied as a free service, were greatly in demand. With letter writing reaching a peak each mail day, 100,000 sheets of paper were used in five weeks. A later investigation showed that 98 per cent of the letters which went out from the camp bore the Y.M.C.A. insignia. As the weeks went by, building work in the camp quickly neared completion. The Y.M.C.A. soon became able to decentralise some of its activities, because in each of the eight regimental institutes erected through the camp a large room was set aside for it as a reading and writing place. . Each of these rooms is under the direction of a unit committee, whose responsibilities include the supervision of the library and the planning of entertainments, tours and other activities. To these - committees the association’s three officers lend their advice and assistance.

In addition, a general Y.M.C.A. centre is now partially open. It has three sections—the first, a hut for games, refreshments and social activities; the second, a hut for writing and reading; the third, an open-air auditorium which will be suitable for concerts, boxing, wrestling and basketball matches and other forms of entertainment and recreation.

In a short time, too, the New Zealand Y.M.C.A., in co-operation with its British counterpart, will open a centre in Cairo to provide for the needs of men on leave. This building will house amenities much the same as those provided by the association in the cities and towns of the Dominion. It is hoped to enlist the aid of existing community groups in the city in arranging programmes and making social contacts for the men.

Future contingents of the New Zealand force will be served by organisation on the same lines. The normal strength of Y.M.C.A. personnel in a division is six, but the scope of the work here is so great that permission has been granted the association to increase this figure to eleven. The throe secretaries already with the force are Mr V. C. Jones, Mr J. H. Ledgerwood and Mr F. E. S. Long.

While they cannot tell a complete story of Y.M.C.A. service with the New Zealanders, facts and figures help to show the extent of the work. In a recent period of four weeks there were eight concerts held in various unit areas, ten community “sings,” seven card evenings, eight lectures and two debates. Two hundred men took part in an excursion on the Nile, 70 in another to places of interest in Cairo, and 75 in a bus trip around the mosques. In one week alone the total number of men who took part in activities of all kinds was 2,200. Hospitals are visited regularly and comforts distributed on behalf of the National Patriotic Fund Board. There are no records and figures to unfold the never-ending tale of personal services rendered to the men by the asso-ciation-intimate problems solved, material help given, letters written for sick men —ways of service that have earned the gratitude of scores of soldiers.

Full co-operation exists between the work of the association and that of the padres. Responsibilities and fields of activity have been so defined as to avoid overlapping, with the Y.M.C.A. devoting its attention to social and the padres to specifically spiritual work. The special room in the Y.M.C.A. hut is free to the padres to use as they wish. Padres and secretaries alternate in the leading of Sunday evening song services and nightly vespers, and occasionally at church parades. Circumstances create opportunities, and for that reason the work of the Y.M.C.A. will vary as the surroundings and tasks of the New Zealand force are varied. The men of the force have already seen illustration of this, and they are beginning to take it for granted that whether it be desert training or action itself that isolates them from the amenities of permanent camps, “the Y.M. will be there.”