CHRISTMAS PLANS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 December 1942, Page 3

CHRISTMAS PLANS

FOR NEW ZEALAND FORCES.

SERVING IN PACIFIC ISLANDS

(Official War Correspondent N-Z.E.F.) SOMEWHERE IN PACIFIC, Dec. 14. When New Zealand families sit down on Christmas Day for the traditional noonday feast, their menfolk in the land, air and sea forces out m the Pacific will be trying hard to do the same. It will not be easy, but special arrangements which are now in . hand will ensure that the seasonal spirit will be with them at least in part. The Christmas- tradition dies hard under the most adverse circumstances. Air crews of the R.N.Z.A.F. squadrons will toast one another with lukewarm fruit juice as their bombers roar over island coasts and waters, and there will be little celebration on the mine-sweep-ers rising and falling on the Pacific swell. Among many an isolated group of New Zealanders there will be only the thoughts, and wishes, spoken and left unsaid, to distinguish the occasion from any other day of the war. On land everything possible is being done to mark in an adequate way the fourth Christmas of the war. At this and the other Pacific bases where New Zealand forces draw their rations from the Americans, it is hoped that turkeys will be available. Plum puddings are to be pooled from the patriotic parcels which each man is expected to receive before Christmas, and the unit canteens are endeavouring to build up a reserve of beer and cordials for the day. A grant of 2s a head which is being made will probably be devoted largely to this, since there is little else on which it can be spent. The army cooks will vie with one another in making it a memorable eating day, and the officers will dine with the men in mess halls and tents decorated with greenery and wild flowers. That will be the probable extent of the most elaborate of these Christmas celebrations. At the other end of the scale there is the picture of workstained men taking a few minutes off to sit round an open-air cookhouse and joke about other Christmases they have known, and the Christmases yet to come.