Damaged

IN

Transit

1 ALWAYS read with a chuckle the humorous wartime incidents re counted now and again in the “PIM,” writes Rev. V. H. Gough-Sherwin, for merly of the Melanesian Mission at Wau, TNG, later a padre with the New Guinea Volunteer Rifles, and now of St. Jude’s Rectory, Port Elliot, South Australia.

However, I wonder if you ever heard of the affair of Major Bill Edwards’ “medi cal supplies”?

It was somewhere along the lines of communication on the Lakekamu-Bull dog-Wau secret route in 1942 that a very important parcel labelled “Major W.

Edwards, Medical Supplies” went astray.

Actually, the contents of the packet were port and sherry, sent by Ted Jenyns, our 2IC.

When Bill Edwards learned that the long-awaited supplies had failed to reach his camp, he literally went into action.

Runners and messages blitzed the 1. of c. to know where the blanketty-blank pack age was.

Actually, by some quirk of fate—and Army “organisation”—the package had passed Harry O’Kane’s post and a few others and had come to roost in the stag ing camp of three young and useful warriors—Keith, Tom and Jim.

A casual shake revealed the swish of liquid of a sort. The next obvious step was investigation—and soon bottles of port and sherry were reclining naked and unashamed amidst their brown paper draperies.

Suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, Bill Edwards became the most popular man in all New Guinea. His health was toasted; his name became the theme of a new, spontaneous drinking-song; his ancestors must be praised with arm up raised and a clenched, full pannikin.

Then Bill’s health became a matter of importance once more—he was toasted and honoured again, and again, as liba tion followed libation and nectar was tossed down a trio of dry throats suffer ing from that wartime tropical disease known as “neck rust.”

But even Bill Edwards’ popularity had to wane and succumb when wine ceased to flow from empty “medicine bottles.”

NEXT morning, after the period known as “non compos’ had been weath ered, two awkward problems kept bobbing up—(a) What to do about Bill’s “medical supplies”; and (b) the forward ing of same to an ever-growing-agitated Bill.

Inspiration came. The “marines” were carefully repacked, tied, and placed gently on the ground; then they were scientifically smitten with a large rock dropped from a mathematically-calculated height.

This mutilated mass, gingerly collected, was then inscribed with the epitaph “damaged in transit” and sent away in all haste to Major Edwards by a special police-boy runner. - Bill’s reaction had to be seen to be believed, so thev say. It was cataclysmic, a kind of terrifying and fascinating up heaval in human bulk. His top-priority inquiries all along the line met only a solid phalanx of sheer ignorance about the whole thing.

Poor William, I don’t think he ever completely recovered. In fact. I’ve been informed on sound authority that the mere sight of a broken bottle nowadays has the effect of making the shuddering Bill resemble a case of acute anaemia.