PATRIOTIC WORK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 July 1941, Page 3

PATRIOTIC WORK

NEW ZE/\LAND TROOPS IN EGYPT WIDENING OF ACTIVITIES. EVACUATION FROM CRETE. A letter written on May 13 by Lieu-tenant-Colonel F. Waite, Overseas Commissioner for the National Patriotic Fund Board —extracts from which have already been published—gave an outline of what was done to provide comforts for the New Zealanders on their return to Egypt from Greece. Under date of June 3 another dispatch has been received by the board from Colonel Waite, and this deals with the arrival of the New Zealand troops after the evacuation from Crete. It adds a short pen picture to the many stories that have already appeared about this epic event. “Keep on sending us £4OOO on the first of each month,” is Colonel Waite's request to the board, and it is one which is being met. “From day to day,” he says, “we cannot anticipate our needs. The work will widen and grow.” “We had requests from Crete for shaving gear, writing paper, cigarettes, and books,” Colonel Waite’s report says. “We made up consignments of twelve cases of these things for each ship that started out for the island. FOUR ANXIOUS NIGHTS. “On May 29 we went down to the docks again and met, during four anxious nights, every cruiser and destroyer that came in—precious ships with very precious freight.” He and his assistant mot every ship, and visited every hospital. The Y.M.C.A. did magnificent work—Mr Shove, Mrs Chapman, Mr Steptoe, and their helpers sticking to it all night at the docks, and all day at the transit camp. Colonel Waite refers specially to one ship-load of walking wounded. They were men with their clothes ripped and torn, every second man with a, fortnight’s, growth of whiskers —men who were worn out with incessant bombing and who had walked, wounded, back over thirty miles of mountain track to the sea. Under cover of darkness the little motor barges had edged in and had taken the sorelytried men out to the waiting ship.

HIGH PRAISE FOR NAVY. “ ‘Thank God we’ve got a Navy,’ used to be said as a joke at Trentham,” Colonel Waite’s dispatch continues. “Well, without the heroic efforts of the Navy our men would have all died or been captured in Crete. As it was, thousands got safely away. New Zealanders here and at home owe an incalculable debt to the Royal Navy. “Cruisers and destroyers brought back the fighting units. As the men filed off the decks, they fell in on the wharves. Th'ese men are real soldiers, each man still sticking to his rifle. Their morale was magnificent. ‘But you can’t fight dive-bombers and 5001 b bombs with bayonets,’ said one young officer.

“The Y.M.C.A., as our expending agents, have done very good work in Crete, but I'm afraid there may be some field secretaries and chaplains missing.”