WHAT TO DO? WHERE TO GO?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 145, 2 April 1942, Page 19

WHAT TO DO? WHERE TO GO?

When Soldiers Ask Questions The W.W.S.A. Information Bureau Often Knows The Answers

Clerical Division of the W.W.S.A. will know that the asking of awkward questions isn’t the prerogative of those members of the CBS staff who conduct Information Please sessions. For, eight weeks ago, the W.W.S.A. Clerical Division opened at the Wellington Railway Station an Information Bureau for members of the armed forces, and since then they’ve been hard at work answering questions from nine o’clock in the morning to eight and nine o’clock at night. Last evening I strayed past the bureau at about six o’clock. There’s a notice board outside which gives information about Church services, transport, and current entertainments, and a blackboard on which appears the names of those for whom messages are left. On the other side of the counter two young women were on duty. I asked them about the Bureau. Arranging Hospitality "I suppose the most important information we give is about accommodation," said one. She, showed me a notebook in which were listed the names of public and private hotels and their tariffs. " We’re able to tell them roughly how much each place will cost them and then they can choose between them. But in many cases we're able to arrange private hospitality for the week-end or even longer. That’s the service we’re proudest of. You see many of the boys don’t want to stay in hotels-perhaps some of them are from the country and prefer to, be somewhere more homelike, or perhaps they just want to get away from: other khaki-clothed shapes for a while." Alternatives to Drinking "And do you arrange hospitality for members of the fighting services of other countries?" Bi this time many members of the

"Oh yes, we do that, too. I agree with Major Kirk’s recent statement that New Zealanders should do all they can to show the Americans what New Zealand homes are like. It must be horrible te come to a strange city and find there’s nowhere much to go and nothing much to do but dance and drink. And very often they find the drinking part difficult. I know we had lots of inquiries from Americans: ‘Say, sister, where can I get a drink after six o’clock?’-inquiries which we weren’t able to answer. I feel that the provision.of private hospitality on a nation-wide scale is the only way of preventing ‘Let’s go and have a drink,’ from being almost the only answer to ‘What shall we do?’ " "T agree with you," I said. " And what other questions do you gét besides the one about drinks after six?" "Quite a lot about entertainments. We have the list outside, but we often get consulted about which is the best show in town. And often we help people who have, say, two hours in Wellington, and want to know somewhere to go. "Human Interest" Problems "Do you ever get problems of the Dorothy Dix variety?" "The nearest we've got to that is

arranging pen-friends for lonely soldiers. We've done that quite often. But there’s quite a lot of human interest in this job. We often help to bring people together. One day a soldier arrived in Wellington and asked if we could locate a relation of his — he knew the name but no address -- whom ‘he hadn’t seen for twelve years. We did some frantic ringup and iri the end the happy soldier was borne away by the long-lost relative. On another occasion some one rang up to ask if we could please give Private a message, and told us he would be coming off the Palmerston North train. We enlisted the aid of the railway loud speaker, and to make quite sure one of our girls tackled almost every man in uniform till she found the one she was looking for. Aid For a Bridegroom "But perhaps our most exciting task was helping a young soldier to get to Martinborough in time for his own wedding. He was to have caught the railcar, but’ it was full up and they wouldn’t let him on. He was frantic when he came to us. However, we looked up all sorts of time-tables and found that he

could get a service car to Featherston and a taxi from there. We haven’t yet heard whether he got there in time." "We jot the more interesting things down in our diary," said the other helper, showing me a long black book. There were notes about the sewing on of buttons (" Yes, we do emergency mending," said my informant), the lending of books and golf clubs, and brief records of what the imagination could expand into "human interest" stories of Meetings and partings and wartime romances. The Unrecorded Things But I thought rather of the things unrecorded in the diary, the long hours spent in answering, or waiting to answer, the same old questions of when buses go somewhere and when boats go somewhere else, of what’s on in town to-night and how can I get from here to where I want to go. Or, worse still, of the hours when nothing happened, when the station was cold and draughty and you wanted to get home to your dinner and your book, but you waited on till the scheduled hour because it was just possible that there might be a soldier or a sailor or an airman who might want to know something you might be able to tell him. But as I wasn’t wearing a hat to take off I just said, "I think it’s a very fine idea; having this Information Bureau," and left it at that.