WAR BIRDS SOCIETY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 September 1940, Page 6

WAR BIRDS SOCIETY

ADVENTUROUS AIR FORCE MEN.

Among the personnel of an R.A.F. station there are a number of adventurous young airmen from many parts of the Empire. A dozen of these young men have formed a society which meets one night each week. Each takes a turn as host, and to be a guest is a refreshing experience. All the members have roamed the world and have a story to tell. One is a Scots-Canadian, educated at Manitoba University. His father’s city business did not appeal to him. So he went to work in the canning factories and gold mines of Alaska. One day, on impulse, he jumped a tramp steamer. After a sixty-three-day journey down the Pacific Coast, through the Panama, and across the Atlantic, he arrived in Britain to join the R.A.F. His close pal is “Mac.'’ the grandson of a Governor of the Yukon in the days of the Klondykc gold rush, “jyiac" managed a winning “rose bowl" team in the premier inter-collegiate football match in Canada. While still at college he bought an old freighter. With some fellow students and one experienced seaman, he sailed it on a nightmare journey to Japan, where he sold it for scrap. Two days after the war broke out he left Montreal. He was in Air Force blue a month later.

A regular visitor is a tail, lithe Australian who looks every inch the athlete he is. Friend of Don Bradman, he was running professionally in Britain last summer, and he "just stayed on to see this thing through.” Other members of the society include a heavyweight boxer and an oil-com-pany manager from India.