COMFORTS PROVIDED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 October 1942, Page 4

COMFORTS PROVIDED

NEW ZEALAND FORCES IN BRITAIN

PAYMENTS FROM PATRIOTIC FUND. SOME ITEMS ENUMERATED. New Zealand servicemen in or based on Great Britain, as well as New Zealand prisoners of war. continue to benefit from funds remitted from this country to London by the .National Patriotic Fund Board. For the first quarter of this year expenditure by Che advisory committee totalled £13,465. In this period two remittances totalling £35,000 were made by the Board. Besides the New Zealanders in the Air Force and the Navy, New Zealand is represented in Great Britain by a Forestry Unit. In the first three months of this year £177 was spent on this uni I, the amount being made up as follows: Purchase of billiard tables £ll9, radio sets £27, electric irons £l9, books £ll. The unit was also supplied with surgical equipment from the funds, and this cost £134. Items of expenditure from the Sick and Wounded Account for the first quarter of this year included grants I to the Wai’brook Convalescent Hospital and Cottage, where New Zealanders are accommodated, and a payment of £2OO to the invalid comforts section of the British Red Cross in recognition of invalid comforts in the provision of invalid comforts, special food, etc., for New Zealand prisoners of war who are invalids. The total Red Cross expenditure from National Patriotic Funds in London to March 31 was £17,062. Expenditure from the prisoners of war account for the first three months of the present year totalled £9,256, including £5.407 for the purchase of clothing and £3,210 for tobacco and cigarettes. The purchase of radio sets, sports and games equipment, gramophone records, and books accounted for an expenditure of £ 140 Jirom the New Zealand Navy Account. Among amounts spent on New Zealand airmen were £9l for sports and games equipment and gramophone records, £6B to meet expenses incurred by the R.N.Z.A.F. Rugby team, and a grant of £l5 towards the cost of extending a library at an Air Force station.

Miscellaneous grants from the funds included £l,OOO to the Dominions and Allied Services Hospitality scheme. The rent of the New Zealand Forces Club in Charing Cross Road is also paid out of funds remitted to London. At times the board’s London committee acts as purchasing agent for recreation and other equipment required in the Dominion or in some other part overseas where New Zealand Forces are stationed. The accounts for the first three months of this year contain examples of this—£s2 lor sports goods shipped to New Zealand and £228 for 6,000 mugs and a tea urn for the Y.M.C.A.