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They were Prepared 11

GERMANY

The Ruhr

IN the first instance G.I.S. workers had signed on for one year's service; but the first intensive, hopeful work gradually gave place to an organised routine, as one wave after another of DPs sought asylum in the British zone from the east and later from the south. Some team members had to return at the allotted time to take up their normal work or their home duties; others stayed on; and individual trained Guiders came as replacements.

From now on no new complete trains wen- sent out from England. Members able and willing to stay in the field, together with replacements, were formed into new teams to operate in other areas and to serve other needs as they arose. Thus, in the spring of 1946 the G.I.S. kitchen and canteen units were formed into a relief team for German welfare in the much-bombed Ruhr area. Work here consisted at first in a house-to-house scheme of feeding when all normal supplies and services were disrupted. In the space of nine months the feeding of German children in this area entailed the distribution of 1,500,000 meals and the handling of 96 tons of foodstuffs. Later it consisted chiefly in helping all German welfare schemes that might meet the pressing needs of the time—the housing, feeding and employment of lads without homes or families who lurked in bombed sites or wandered aimlessly from place to place; clothing ex-prisoners of war returning from Russia; trying to cope with the ever-rising scourge of tuberculosis; opening and equipping preventoria for children in danger of contracting this illness—in fact in dealing with very much the same problems as confronted G.I.S. teams who were working with DPs—with the import- ant difference that these people had their own home background and a reasonable hope for a more stable future.

Too old! Yugoslav in typical single men's quarters which he shares with three others. lie is above the age accepted for emigration. And (below) too ill! Patients in a children's T.B. hospital. Part of each day is spent resting on the verandah under the supervision of a nurse.

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