GENERAL RESERVE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 December 1940, Page 8

GENERAL RESERVE

POSITION OF MARRIED MEN & WIDOWERS. STATEMENT BY MR SEMPLE. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. The Minister of Manpower (Mr Semple) today made a statement clarifying two popular misunderstandings regarding the position of married men and widowers in the General Reserve. He said it appeared to be generally known that men married on or after May 1, 1940, were deemed to be unmarried for the purposes of the regulations, so long as they have no children, but many reservists were not clear as to what happens on the birth of a child of such marriages. “A man drawn in the ballot,” the Minister stated, “is deemed to be transferred to the armed forces on the day following the publication of his name in the “Gazette.”' Therefore, if he is properly gazetted as a first division reservist, the subsequent birth of a child does not divest him of the liability for service which he had already incurred. In other words, if he is childless on the day of the “Gazette” notice, then he is a member of the armed forces and will not be discharged solely on account of the birth of a child. If, however, he is first drawn in a Territorial ballot and a child is afterwards born, he will be excluded from any subsequent First Division overseas ballot." Mr Semple explained that, contrary to what was sometimes believed, widowers were not transferred from the second to the first division of the ReI serve on the attainment of a certain age by a child, or the youngest child. It followed that a widower with a child of any age was in the. Second Division.