AIR FORCE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 November 1942, Page 4

AIR FORCE

TRAINING ITS OWN COOKS MORE KITCHEN RECRUITS. WANTED.WOMEN AS WELL AS MEN. Once dependent upon engaging the services of hotel chiefs and other professional cooks, the Royal New Zealand Air Force is now training its own cooks. Although some are already in training at a special service cooking school, more recruits, both male and female, are urgently required for this work, stated an R.N.Z.A.F. personnel officer when interviewed at Air Headquarters, Wellington. He pointed out that while the greatest pressure of the Air Force was naturally directed into the training of air crew personnel for active service, many men who could not serve in this capacity because of age and other reasons, could perform very valuable service in Air Force kitchens. Women enlisted into the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force to undergo the cooking course would be required for service within New Zealand only. Always true of a fighting service, Napoleon’s axiom that an army marched on its stomach, was in effect, no less true of the Air Force; men engaged in flying, under flying training, or working in ground staff trades were putting in long and arduous hours and had to be fed, and well fed, continued the officer. The rapid and continuous expansion of the R.N.Z.A.F. and commitments that the future held, had presented an unprecedented demand for skilled cooks who could cater for large establishments of personnel. This demand had to be met, and women, as well as men, were required to overtake the position, and keep up with it. Enlarging on the ( need for personnel for the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force who are keen to training in cooking, the officer said that they were required for duty in Air Force kitchens throughout New Zealand. Although a great many members of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force were already performing valuable services in Air Force kitchens throughout the country, there was still a certain number of male ’cooks on duty. The enrolment of additional Women's Auxiliary Air Force cooks would allow trained male cooks to be freed for similar duties at battle stations and similar establishments where their services were urgently required. Though all male cooks would not be cleared from stations, in many cases members of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force would be able to undertake all duties and be responsible to the messing officer for kitchens and staff.

The officer went on to point out that in the past, prospective kitchen personnel were sometimes deterred by the popular expression, working in the mess.” This expression, he said, was both misleading and wrong. Persons, male or female, who were selected to be trained as service cooks, would be trained under the direction of expert cooks and dieticians, and persons thus trained would pass out as expert cooks and would be employed as such. This training, he concluded, would stand trainees in good stead in post-war years, either, in the case of women, as domestic cooks, or in the cases of men and women, as personnel for the providore departments of hospitals or similar institutions where a very high standard of efficiency was demanded.