GAY CHRISTMAS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 January 1942, Page 5

GAY CHRISTMAS

IN MILITARY HOSPITALS IN EGYPT

DISTRIBUTION OF GIFT PARCELS.

TROOPS IN THE DESERT ALSO FARE WELL.

(N.Z.E.F. Official News Service.) CAIRO, January 1.

Christmas in hospital has been a gay and generous surprise more filled with the traditional customs than the average celebration at home. We have the hospital staff and the people of New Zealand to thank for a really cheerful anniversary.

After the building had been brightly decorated with streamers, balloons and flowers, all other plans were kept dead secret from us. On Christmas Eve the red-cloaked sisters revived a delightful old hospital custom as they filed through the darkened corridors bearing candles. We heard voices rising and falling right through the building.

Early next morning each of us received from the New Zealand Order of St. John and Red Cross Society a Christmas stocking filled with useful and practical gifts. Then a colourful pantomime horse pranced down the hallway with Santa Claus at the reins distributing gift parcels from the people of New Zealand. These were excellent in quality and choice of contents. Fifty New Zealand cigarettes were also given to each patient. Next a Maori choir party brought homesickness to many hearts by serenading us with beautiful part-singing in rich unaccompanied voices. And Christmas dinner —“shades’of bullybeef and biscuits" cried someone across the hall. I had soup, roast turkey, green peas, baked potatoes, onion, plum pudding and brandy sauce. Afterwards came nuts, sweets and ale.

Meals \vhich would have done credit to chefs of leading hotels were produced by cooks of the New Zealand division when they served up roast turkey for Christmas dinner in the Western Desert. It was a great day for the troops. Every man was given Patriotic Fund parcels with 50 ; cigarettes and a bottle of beer with the dinner.

Major-General Freyberg and his staff officers visited some of the messes, the general have an alfresco meal of chicken, plum pudding and beer with machine-gunners, and wished all a Merry Christmas. Cutside one unit orderly room I saw a notice pinned up reading: “No business today. A Merry Christmas.” That spirit was in evidence throughout the division. Each company cookhouse produced its own special menu. Many unit officers became . mess orderlies, waiting on the men. Maori personnel left out of the battle served up delicacies cooked in a hangi. Some pakehas in another camp were

sceptical of food cooked in Maori fashion, but on tasting the chicken and turkey that came out of the hangi were delighted with the subtle taste which only hangi-cooked food can produce.

Parcels which were issued contained plum puddings. Christmas cake, chocolate, barley sugar, coffee and milk, knitted skull caps to wear under tin hats, writing tablets and meat paste. Church parades were held for most of the units in the morning. Divisional headquarters played seven-a-side football matches on the desert ground. Several units were visited by Major-Gen-eral Freyberg and his staff during the day, while in the evening the general travelled up to one of the Now Zealand general hospitals, spending a long time talking to the wounded.