SOLDIERS’ PARCELS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 July 1941, Page 2

SOLDIERS’ PARCELS

DISTRIBUTION IN MIDDLE EAST many difficulties met with. PROBLEM OF DISTRIBUTION. A recent letter received by the National Patriotic Fund Board from Lieutenant-Colonel F. Waite, the board’s overseas commissioner, makes plain a fact that some, judging from criticism, do not always appreciate the difficulty in wartime of ensuring that from each consignment that leaves this country each member of the New Zealand Forces will receive a parcel. Colonel Waite, in his dispatch, refers to some of the difficulties, shipping and otherwise, which have to be faced in endeavouring to carry out die patriotic work in the Middle East.

His letter mentions that after great preparations had been made to get the distribution.done thoroughly this time, a large portion of the last parcel consignments, instead of arriving at Cairo, was left at an intermediate base. “Having started to issue parcels at the hospitals at Helwan and Helmieh, we must make the best of a bad piece of luck,” his letter (written on June 3) continues. “Many of the men in hospital decided to split one parcel between two men'. I know that the desire of the people of New Zealand is that each man should get a parcel intact. But every reasonable person must see that we can never achieve that ideal.

“Men get shifted from one camp to another; from one continent to another —we simply cannot follow them. They go out to isolated posts for days, and stay for months. By the time we get word that 40 men are in hospital, these men—or perhaps only half of them—are shifted to another address. No one on earth can deliver parcels to every scattered New Zealander in wartime. And when transhipments take place, and when cargoes go on to one port instead of going to another, we can only do our best.

“Men do appreciate the parcels and I suppose we must put up with the critics. Most of lhe men here realise the difficulties ana appreciate what is done for them. But the satisfied ones do not write to newspapers. The critics do.”

Referring to the tobacco and cigarettes sent in this particular shipment, I Colonel Waite said that, though some cases had arrived, others were missing, and he was awaiting a check-up before issuing anything. “We did the Alexandria hospitals as thoroughly as we 'could. I collected manj r cables from men in hospital and forwarded them to relations, paying for these cables out of the fund. We also collected dozens of air-mail letters from hospitals, put on ninepenny stamps, and posted them for the boys. Soon we should have all our wounded back with us near Cairo in our own hospitals. “The next problem .will be that of prisoners of war. It will take a long time to reach anything like finality in this work.”