SCARCITY OF FOOD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 July 1941, Page 5

SCARCITY OF FOOD

REPORTED IN GREECE ! CONCERN FOR BRITISH PRISONERS. . EFFORTS BY RED CROSS & ORDER OF ST JOHN. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 9.15 a.m.) RUGBY, July 22. Reports of chaotic conditions in Greece and an acute scarcity of food among the civilian population are causing concern in Britain about the state of British prisoners of war, both in Greece and in Crete. The Red Cross Society and the St John war organisation have, as an immediate measure, telegraphed £lO,OOO to the British Ambassador in Ankara and £5OOO to Dr Brunel, the representative of the International Red Cross Society in Greece for the purchase of i any food supplies available in Turkey and Greece, to supplement I the prisoners' rations. < The Prisoners of War Department of the Red Cross Society recently stated that, as far as they could judge, about 9,000 men were taken in Greece and these have now been mostly evacuated to Germany. Prisoners in Crete, totalling approximately 13,000, probably are in course of evacuation. The British Red Cross Society has established a reserve of about 500,000 parcels of food, as well as considerable stores of clothing, at Geneva, in charge of the International Red Cross Society, but these cannot be dispatched to Greece as the heavy German military traffic going east, through the Balkans, has occupied all available freight space.