FAST TIME

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 121, 25 May 1942, Page 6

FAST TIME

FORCED MARCH

MAKING SOLDIERS FIT

Proof that intensive, training 'hasfitted- them to face the hardships demanded of soldiers on active service has been supplied by 120 men of the Ist Battalion, Auckland Regiment (C.R.0.), who have just completed a march of 32 miles in eight hours 45 minutes actual marching time. Counting rest periods, 11 hours were spent on the way.

Civilians whose nerves are shattered when they miss the last tram and are faced with the necessity of walking a short mile or two can understand in some small measure the feelings that rend a soldier's bosom when he parades for a 32mile route march. It was with just those feelings that the gallant 120 fell in on Friday morning. The order to march was given about 10 o'clock, and, in dispersed formation, the men moved off.

liong, Long Trail

It was a long road and a winding one. Nature had provided in plenty all those hills and dales that delight the tourist but wearyi the fighting man. It was with sighs of relief that the marching men greeted the first "break." The pace was hot, and, with full kit up, they were feeling the strain.

The meal provided at the mid-day stop on the roadside was disposed of, as one soldier put it, "right smartly." Soup was gulped down and topped off with bread, butter and jam as a "binder," before the single files of men set off along the highway once more. It was only after the half-way mark had been passed that some of the less , hardy began to think longingly of the desirable advantages of the "meat wagon"—that » army vehicle that haunts marching-' troops to pick up the i halt, the lame and the blind. It is *in h that truck that the military exercises its healing touch on 'feet that can take no more, releases blisters that look like, small "blimps" land in general make v life endurable Jfor a while.

There are always the mathemati-jcally-minded, even in the army, and ■one scholastic infantryman, rousing ihimself from a series ofjcalculations that had rendered him r silent and brooding for more than five miles, remarked that if they could complete the march under nine hours they would have taken something like 63,000 paces, based on a marching rate of 120 paces per minute. What his comrades said to him cannot be recorded here.

Happy Warriors Singing and whistling that had enlivened the earlier stages of the march died down as fatigue overtook the men. The march became a serious affair—a matter of lifting one's feet and putting them down again, of looking at the back of the other fellow's legs and wondering why he didn't pull his socks up or get his boots mended. Anything, in fact, to take one's mind off the necessity of keeping on the move. The hot dinner provided late in the day renewed vigour. Meat and potatoes and cabbage, topped off with a dish of "Shanghai ballast" — rice — provided the fuel that kept the legs moving. A very few fell out, unable to keep up the pace, and were taken into the "meat wagon." but, when within a few miles of the base camp, with the pace as hot as ever, it was announced that those who could not "make the grade" would have to find their way back to camp in their own time. A few more dropped by the wayside in spite of that, and it was a weary company of men which arrived at camp a few minutes before 9 o'clock that night, after covering 32 miles in eight hours 45 minutes and being just 11 hours out from the starting point. Their beds had been made for them by the "cripples" who had come in earlier in the "meat wagon" and. after a foot inspection, they flopped on to their palliasses to sleep the sleep of the just and the weary.

But the Ist Battalion is proud of the march, and with good cause. As a test of stamina and discipline it has not been excelled in almost six months of intensive training.