OFF TO FIJI

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 84, 31 January 1941, Page 2

OFF TO FIJI

Troops’ Cheery Farewell ACH time Empire ships have carried New Zealand youth, cheering and singing, to the dangers of war, the same thoughts have gone with them. It has been difficult to find anything new to say about each successive exodus. Each has meant so much, and yet it has been ‘possible to say so little. But with a recent departure there was a new element, When the troops left for Fiji their number was not so great nor the size of the transports so tremendous as they had been for the first echelons, But they were taking our men for duty in garrisons close to our own shores, and war cannot ever be far away from any country in a warring world when ships travel at 20 knots and aeroplanes at 300 miles an hour. These men might have-no one knew or knows yet-a more directly important task in the defence of their country than those who had preceded them out of home harbours, and this more domestic aspect of their job lightened the parting. The crowd, although silent as such crowds are in the blare of a band and the blast of sirens, was cheerful. The men this time did not line the rails with faces eager for a last look at a country that would soon be left so very far

behind. There was more of the spirit of an incidental adventure about this departure. The masters of the ships in harbour must have sensed the easier informality of the occasion. They could not resist the temptation to try and make this departure something more in the spirit of those occasions of 1914-18. One blew his siren. Another answered. Then another, and for five unrestrained minutes the harbour echoed to the tuneless boosting of the noise. And it all seemed more sane and ordinary when the Governor-General appeared and used a microphone. There was far more hilarity. Clusters of relatives on the wharf got busy sending last presents aboard. Some were cunning. One old man, who had been doing the usual before he arrived, had two bulky, oblong parcels under his arm. The boys spotted him and they established a line of communication with a long piece of string. The parcels swayed dangerously against the iron plates of the ship’s side, but all were hoisted safely. A battery of press photographers, watching operations, carefully screened them from the embarkation officer. One enterprising lass, seeing that everyone was in good humour, enticed her sweetheart down to a handy porthole, stretched on tip toe from a bollard, and enjoyed a protracted kiss. The crowd spotted this strategy and crowded round to cheer before they had finished.

WAR DIARY