HOW DID THEY DIE?
Sir,-We hear quite often over the radio about soldiers being decorated, Can you tell me what they are decorated for? Is it the first to reach the home base who has the prize? I see that quite a few are the head men-men who accepted the responsibility of watching and caring for our boys who went all trustingly to do their duty. With all due respect and honour to those leaders, I think we hear too much about them. It is about time they were able to tell the waiting parents and wives of the Private Soldiers something of the battle in which they fought. Surely with so many at H.Q. safe and well, some one is able to tell us. When and where did our boys die? Up to the present time all we have is just the "Killed in action" notice. And many are the weeks which have passed while we patiently wait for some account of the battles. I sometimes wonder what we should think if a Captain of a ship and his officers were the first to leave when it was sinking and could not tell the world what happened to the crew. How nice it would be if we could hear over the air an account of the battles our boys fought in. How is it their commanders do not tell us what happened to the boys they left in the battlefields? It is our boys who will never be able to tell us themselves what we want to hear about. If an account of each platoon in its turn could be broadcast, how much satisfaction it would give to the ever waiting, watching, listening relatives. If on Sunday mornings we could hear more about them and less about sports it would be appreciated. We don’t want to hear about the fellow who calls himself a soldier and hangs around a base camp to tell his story. I am sending you this just to give you some idea of what the Man in the Street is thinking in this
quarter.
MOTHER
(Nelson South).
(This letter was received the day before General Freyberg’s official account of the Greece and Crete fighting was published, and a week before the V.C. awards were announced. We discuss it in our leading article.-Ed.)
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 122, 24 October 1941, Page 4
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387HOW DID THEY DIE? New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 122, 24 October 1941, Page 4
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