Taking the last man

A group of Otago boys in A Company at the 39th Reinforcements segregation camp at Trentham. —...
A group of Otago boys in A Company at the 39th Reinforcements segregation camp at Trentham. — Otago Witness, 17.4.1918.
As the strain of the war increases and the demand for men becomes more insistent, the Military Service Board finds itself faced with new problems of policy.

The chairman of the Otago Board (Mr H. Y. Widdowson, S.M.) drew special attention to one of these, arising out of a case that came before it at Oamaru yesterday. Up to the present, he said, the board had adopted the policy of not taking the last man from the farm. There had always been someone left behind or in prospect as a manager, for it was not the intention of the board to put any farm out of activity. The only exception they had made so far was in the case of single men with very small holdings that were doing practically no good. The board had rightly considered that such men would be doing much more good by going to the front than remaining where they were. Now, however, we had reached the stage where the Second Division was being called up, and not only the A men of that division, but men with children, and the question arose as to how far they could go in leaving single men on farms.

Assault pauses

Mr Philip Gibbs writes:- Since the enemy’s offensive began a month ago in the attempt to destroy the British armies and divide us from the French, Saturday was the first day that there was no attack against us. The front has quietened down  to desultory shelling. We may honestly and thankfully claim that this is due to the most determined resistance of our battalions in the line from Wytschaete and Kemmel to the Ancre and the Somme, against fresh storm troops far outnumbering them. They beat off every attempt to break through, and hurled the enemy back with ghastly losses. Our men, lying in the Flanders ditches, with French troops intermingled with them, repulsed all attacks on Thursday and Friday. What the Germans have reached in their preliminary attacks beyond Bailleul, and still more in their desperate break through between Robecq and Givenchy, is a harvest of bleeding men now garnered in the field hospitals behind their lines.

Destroying flies

Giving evidence before the Defence Expenditure Commission, Professor Kirk detailed the method which had been adopted for the destruction of flies at Featherston and Trentham camps, and said that, since July, 1916, there had been no fly-breeding at Featherston, although every camp must attract flies, and that enormous numbers had been killed. Featherston was, he said, surrounded by a fly-breeding district, and the town was most unsatisfactory in that respect; but the camp methods for killing flies were gradually being adopted. He suggested that where there was a camp an area of four or five miles should be the subject of inspection by the military sanitary authorities.

Petrol fire

An instance of the necessity for care in the use of petrol was exemplified in a country town garage recently (says the Lyttelton Times). A match was dropped in the street gutter outside the garage, and this ignited some petrol which was evidently floating on the surface of the water. The flame travelled along the gutter, up a drain leading into the garage, setting fire to a car from which the petrol had evidently leaked. By the aid of two chemical fire extinguishers the fire was put out . — ODT, 23.4.1918.

 

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