"BORAX” TO HAVE COAT

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21211, 6 September 1940, Page 7

"BORAX” TO HAVE COAT

RIFLE BATTALION MASCOT (From the official War Correspondent with the New Zealand Forces in Great Britain), ALDERSHOT, August 6 “Borax,” unofficial mascot of the Wellington Rifle Battalion, was away from his base on a 100-mile route march when he heard over the air from the 8.8. C. that the girls at the Hutt Valley High School were making him a coat. He was deeply touched, and inordinately proud of the greatness thus thrust upon him. With admirable tact he refrained from mentioning that he had a coat already. No doubt he felt—and what High School girl will disagree?—that when one has worn the same coat through the autumn of the Southern Hemisphere to the threshold of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere, he is entitled to another. So now Borax, too, is watching the mails. Although he is enjoying English life as well as any of us, Borax is no longer quite the star attraction he was on the transport. There art now other mascots, an international company of them, although Borax is the senior—which- counts for much in the Army—and has come the farthest. The West Australian wallaby that lives with the South Island Rifle Battalion was acquired in Perth, and the A.S.C.'s monkeys came from Sierra Leone.