Imperial Valley press., 1943-03-31
ON THE FRONT
IN THE VALLEY
RED CROSS ABROAD

secretary for the FL Centro chapter
from Mark A. r. Thomas, assistant
director now stationed in India.
The letter was inspired by receipt
of press clippings in February tell
ing of the Ell Centre chapters an
nual meeting in December with
election of H. r. Anderson as chair
man, Thomas sending his good
wishes to the chapter officers and
to Mrs Meagher.
Last August Mr.. Schafer Chead
OF the Pacific area released me to
insular and foreign operations and
my first assignment was to the
middle east and then suddenly in
September, they reorganized activi-
ties in the Far East and I was as
signed to this new theatre of Red
Cross operations as the assistant
director.
1--WE have a tremendou job out
here, job centering chiefly around
recreation The territory which we
service covers an area even greater
than the area covered from coast
to coast in the United States, but
here we are hampered by COM
lnunication facilities and by trans
portation facilities. We can not
pick up a phone and reach our
various units as we could pick up
& phone and call Ell Centre from
! ,osr &c n1c n
more difficult to transport our sup
plies from one location to another.
In many instances all equipment
must be flown to club
SUPPLIES BY PLANE
I'VE opened one such club at
location in China where every item
ON rugs and curtains to knives
and forks had to be flown by our
air force to that location In
other words, it is not like getting
/ from Phoenix to Ell Centre when
the earthquake shook Imperial VAL
ley in 1910 and recall. Mr.. Schafer
simply picked up the phone in San
Francisco and told me to get to
you and to Mr.. Delp major
Charles P. Delp. then disaster pre-
paredness chairman for the Ell
Centro chapter, in hurry. re-
call leaving Phoenix at midnight
and being in Ell Centre. commune
eating with you, few hours later.
That's the type of thing it is al
most impossible to do out here,
that makes it far more difficult for
US to organize and bring the neces-
sary facilities to the troops sta
toned on some of the more isolated
fighting fronts in this war. In one
area we can not open central
club facility because there is no
transportation for the troops to
congregate at a central facility,
consequently we have opened l8
Cay rooms and established a mobile
canteen and entertainment unit
(The day rooms referred to in the
letter are recreation rooms, some
times only big enough to accom-
modate Is men or so, which the
Red Cross establishes at the iSolat-
ed fronts, while the clubs are large
recreation buildings, established by
the Red Cross in some town or city
where many troops are congre-
gatedD
I'm another area where certain
group of men can be reached only
ty pack train or by dropping ma
terial from airplanes, we have ar
ranged a series of packages con-
tanning recreational supplies, cigar
cites, candies. ETC., which are drop
ped to the men by parachute.
MANY CLUBS
"To date we have six clubs in
operation and there will be total
of 10 service clubs operating with
in the next few weeks. On top OF
that we are now running 10 day
rooms and have just received
group of new station hospital
workers who will be scattered
throughout the entire theatre.
"If you and your particular COM
mittee members could only see the
tremendously important part which
the home service program plays IN
these isolated and distant localities
YOU would feel that every moment
of the time which you have given
to any particular case is the most
important time you have ever spent
with the Red Cross and / know in
many instances you have had some
difficulty and aggravating home
service situations.
ALSO if the people of the valley
could see the part the American
Red Cross is attempting to fill in
its overseas program of welfare and
recreation with our armed forces,
yCur chapter would have no dill
ficulty in doubling the tremendous
quota which you undoubtedly have
ir this largest war fund campaign
in the history of the Red Cross.
After seeing the Red Cross func-
tioning in all fields including the
foreign field. I am even more i'm
pressed with the fact that the
chapter job is the main job in Red
CfOSS ana Cile illoSI iiilloi Valo Joo'
If it were not for the splendid
volunteers. this job overseas could
never be done. It is exciting and
fascinating TO work in an overseas
post. but you people working in our
chapters at home are the people
that are doing the real and most
difficult job faced by the Red
IL H..