Two employees of the Kaitangata Coal Company told a Times reporter yesterday that about a dozen men known to them enlisted a month ago, and were called up for the 17th Reinforcements.
They left their employment a week before they expected to go to camp, and then they received a telegram from the Defence Department telling them to continue their employment, as they were not required with the reinforcements.
The company had applied to the Minister of Munitions, and secured an exemption for its employees from military service.
The men who received this message at once appealed to the local Recruiting Committee, and got into telegraphic communication with Wellington.
Captain Stephens, the officer commanding the Milton area, visited Kaitangata on Tuesday evening, and met the men who had been refused permission to go to camp, members of the local Recruiting Committee, and others.
Captain Stephens fully explained the position, and in view of the special circumstances pointed out the volunteers were eventually granted permission to join the reinforcements, which left the next day ...
As instances of the difficulties which recruits have to put up with, our informants stated that two hours after some of the recruits had been warned to proceed to Milton on May 31 they received a telegram: "All previous arrangements cancelled.''
They also state that, while Mr Massey, as chairman of the Recruiting Board, sent a telegram to the Kaitangata Recruiting Committee asking for every available man to be sent forward, the committee shortly afterwards received a telegram from a high military authority asking it to use all its influence in keeping the Kaitangata volunteers at home, as they were more wanted there.
Mr Robert Lee (manager of the Kaitangata Company stated that the company, like many other business concerns in the country, had had its staff so depleted by the war that it was becoming increasingly difficult to carry on.
Over 130 employees had gone direct from the company's service, and it was now employing only 287 instead of about 500 men, as is usual at this time of the year. The company was not preventing any man from volunteering, and, of course, had no power to do so.
• There was recently formed at a conference in Wellington of returned soldiers from all parts of the dominion, the New Zealand Returned Soldiers' Association.
A branch of this organisation has been formed in Dunedin, and is now making an effort to secure the enrolment of every returned soldier in and around Dunedin.
Its object is to promote the general welfare of returned soldiers as such and as citizens of New Zealand.
There are two branches of membership for soldiers - active, for discharged men, and associate for those who are not discharged - and one important qualification necessary is service overseas in any of his Majesty's Forces.
The two soldiers' organisations previously in existence in Dunedin have voluntarily gone out of existence in order to throw in their combined weight with the new association, which is the only one of its sort at present in existence in Otago, and should therefore gain the support of returned men.
Returned soldiers here have an opportunity of forming themselves into a strong and influential body. - ODT, 3.6.1916.
• COPIES OF PICTURE AVAILABLE FROM ODT FRONT OFFICE, LOWER STUART ST, OR WWW.OTAGOIMAGES.CO.NZ
