WAR PRISONERS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 June 1942, Page 4

WAR PRISONERS

SUPPLY OF CLOTHING COUPONS NEWS FROM EASTERN AREA. APPROACH TO INTERNATIONAL RED CROSS. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. The next of kin of prisoner’s of war are notified by the Inquiry Office that coupons for clothing for quarterly personal parcels will be available towards the end of next week. They can be sent out only with special Red Cross labels and cannot be obtained before the labels are due. Next of kin at present holding label's can, if they so desire, obtain coupons by personal or written application to their provincial office. Such labels must be sent or produced to the Inquiry Office and they will be returned to the relatives. Seme comfort may be taken by those with relatives captured in the Eastern war zone by the fact that one relative in Wellington has already received a message which says that an office resident of Shanghai approached an International Red Cross delegate there with a message and it was sent to the Inquiry Office through Geneva. Senders of extracts from letters are advised by the office not to send manuscripts they want returned. A copy has to go to the printer and keeping track of it would involve much work, apart from mutilations undergone. Since the packing service was undertaken by the British Red Cross and the St John war organisation, more than 4,250,0000 British food and tobacco parcels have gone forward,- as well as more than 370,000 medical and invalid food parcels. Between July 1 last and February 15 of this year the Prisoners of War Department has sent 247 tons of chocolate to British prisoners of war, packed in standard food parcels, and quarterly parcels have been sent on behalf of next of kin, each of the latter containing a halfpound slab.' Excluding 18 unofficial prisoners, the total number of prisoners now on the files is 6,141.