| OCR Text |
Show RED CROSS FIELD DIRECTORS SOLVE SERVICEMEN'S PROBLEMS K , -s " j$ : - - I a - k 1 - -i i- A Red Cross services to the armed forces are available wherever U. S. servicemen are stationed. Here a Red Cross field director goes right to a young sailor at work on his ship for the facts he needs to help solve a problem. The sailor was young. He had finished his home leave in a southern south-ern coastal city and was heading back to his California base. He said goodby to his parents and to an older brother, a marine veteran just returned from service. Then he left by bus. A few hours later the older brother was killed in an automobile accident. The family appealed to the Red Cross to locate the younger son so he could return home. Within a short while a Red Cross chapter secretary along the route intercepted the bus, broke the news, and helped the lad get started start-ed back home. There the chapter got in touch with the field director at the west coast base and verified the facts for the commanding officer offi-cer who was being asked to extend ex-tend the sailor's leave. Once or more every minute, around the clock last year, the Red Cross performed some service for members of the military forces and their families. Among the nearly three quarters of a million cases handled, a large percentage involved involv-ed supplying verified information concerning home conditions requiring requir-ing emergency leave or extension of lave. While the Red Cross cannot grant leave to a serviceman, military authorities depend upon its post field directors and the network net-work of chapters for reports of conditions underlying such leave requests. Field directors in 364 military installations and hospitals and 1,-059 1,-059 itinerant- and sub-stations in this country and abroad aid servicemen serv-icemen with personal problems that range from babies and budgets to helping straighten out delays that hold up pay or family allowances. The serviceman has his family problems, marital difficulties, financial fi-nancial strains, and family illnesses ill-nesses all disturbing to morale. Field directors, providing 24-hour 24-hour service at military installations, installa-tions, are pretty much in the same situation as the family doctor. They are routed out of bed at all hours to face any one of a hundred complicated problems. Sometimes it may be to get a report on the condition of a critically ill member of a soldier's family, or to lend him money for an emergency trip home, or to find housing for a family unexpectedly un-expectedly arriving at the post. Whatever the problem, the serviceman serv-iceman feels free to turn to the Red Cross for help, knowing that he will find a sympathetic friend in the man wearing the Red Cross uniform. |
