Contact with the Americans

Because of the wide dispersal of the troops the chaplains had little opportunity of meeting other chaplains though some had very happy relations with their colleagues in the United States Army. Many New Zealand chaplains bought quantities of welfare material from the American Post Exchanges until a Divisional order forbade this practice. The American chaplains were most helpful in looking after New Zealand wounded in American hospitals, while page 120 the Senior American Chaplain in the South Pacific, Colonel Kronke, gave valuable assistance in the early days in New Caledonia. In many places, notably at Noumea and on a United States seaplane tender anchored in Blanche Bay in the Treasuries, New Zealand chaplains regularly conducted services for Americans when an American chaplain was not present to look after certain denominations.