VOYAGE TO ICELAND

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21204, 29 August 1940, Page 4

VOYAGE TO ICELAND

NEW ZEALAND OFFICER UNEXPECTED EXPERIENCE (From the Official War Correspondent with the New Zealand Forces in Great Britain.) ALDERSHOT, July 14 ' To sail from Lyttelton for, as he thought, an Egyptian port and to arrive in Iceland under the midnight sun, has been the experience of Captain C. N. Watson, of Christchurch, and a New Zealand Rifle Battalion. Captain Watson was quartermaster of his transport, responsible for all the military stores it carried. Stores for shore were still in the holds when the last of his colleagues left to entrain for camp, so he stayed aboard. The ship was lying in the stream, troops having gone off by tender. One afternoon she moved up harbour to a berth, and the lone New Zealander, who was in touch with his superiors and remaining aboard by their orders, yet getting a little restive, went to bed fully expecting to be able to begin unloading next morning. When he awoke troops were coming aboard—troops for Iceland. The orders of the military and naval authorities were that they must sail at once. There was no time to spare for unloading. Military stores for Iceland were stowed on top of those from New Zealand awaiting discharge in the United Kingdom. Captain Watson sought fresh orders. “Stay with your stores,” he was told. So he stayed, spent a pleasant fortnight on the Icelandic coast, and, his ship back in British waters and the precious stores unloaded at last, has just come with them to camp. Imagine the West Coast sounds without bush, but just as steep as they are, with snow almost down to the water-line, and there, he says, you have Iceland —an island of magnificent harbours but little hinterland. Yet it grows and exports mutton—small, sweet carcases said to have been in happier times among the delicacies of Europe. And the brand on carcases taken abroad at Reykjavik for the provisioning of isolated troop stations round the coast was—odd conjunction this for a Canterbury man—“Kea.”