FOR MIDDLE EAST

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 November 1941, Page 2

FOR MIDDLE EAST

VOLUNTARY AID UNIT SELECTION OF WOMEN MADE.

TO BE ANNOUNCED NEXT WEEK. (By Telegraph—Press- Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day.. The' personnel of the voluntary aid detachment of 182 women for service in the Middle East with the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force is likely to be announced early in the coming week. Nominations for inclusion in the unit were considered in Wellington yesterday by the special committee appointed for this purpose, and the names of the women selected have been submitted to the Army Department, which will arrange to hav-e them medically examined. Provided they pass the prescribed medical test they will be accepted for service. Reserves over and above those actually required have been provisionally selected to allow .for medical rejects. The selection committee consisted of Miss M. I. Lambie, Director of the Nursing Division, and chairman of the National Voluntary Aid Council; Miss I. Willis, Matron-in-Chief, Army Nursing Service; Miss L. Banks, matron, Palmerston North Hospital; Miss E. Tennent, Red Cross Society; Mrs G. Barltrop, Order of St. John; and a member of the Women’s War Service Auxiliary, central executive. When announcing recently that 200 women were to be selected for service in the Middle East, the Prime Minister, Mr Fraser, said the unit would be entitled the New Zealand Women’s War Service Auxiliary (Overseas Hospital Division), and would be largely composed of voluntary aids with a small number of women for clerical duties in the hospitals. The final selection of voluntary aids was made from a total of 364 nominations forwarded by the district organisations of the Order of St. John and the Red Cross Society. The organisations are equally represented in the final selection of personnel. The aids are single women who will have attained the age of 23 years on December 1, 1941, and will not have attained the age of 34 years on the same date. They are required to be the holders of first aid, home nursing, and home hygiene certificates, and to have taken courses of 60 hours’ training in public ' hospitals. They must also be active members of either the St. John ambulance nursing division or Red Cross aid detachments, and of the medical standard required of nurses for overseas with the Army Nursing Service. The women selected will be attested for service overseas with the 2nd N.Z.E.F., and they will be required to serve for the duration of the war and twelve months thereafter. Selection was based on suitability, personality, general physique, and previous experience, and references as. to character were required of. each nominee. The women required for clerical duties will be selected by the central executive of the Women’s War Service Auxiliary from nominations received through its district committees. The applications will be confined to members of the. Women’s War Service Auxiliary and its affiliations.