DIVISIONAL CAVALRY

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 3, Issue 205, 28 August 1940, Page 7

DIVISIONAL CAVALRY

MANEC'VRES IN ENGLAND (From tlio Ollieial War Correspondent attached to the New Zealand Forces in Gicat Britain) ALDERSIIOT, .Inly 24. Throughout military history the cavalryman has been bound to his unit and his fellows by a special bond: this common love of their horses. In New Zealand the mounted rille volunteer or Territorial is Qrst a horseman, then a soldier. None the less a good soldier on that account; in some senses a better. One did sometimes wonder, however, what the troopers would see in the military life if ever he should l)e parted from bis horse. Now they have been parted. There is little* place in modern warfare for mounted troops. To pit them against tanks or.the dive bombers would be worse than the Eight Brigade's charge of the. Russian guns at Crimea. Nevertheless there remains great need for the qualities which made cavalry invaluable to British commanders in some of the famous campaigns of the past—mobility, surprise, speed, thrust in attack, concentrated bitting power for short periods. Thanks to "progress" the horse is no longer a military repository of those qualities- a motor vehicle may be. So although the trooper has lost his horse, he remains mounted—over an internal combustion engine.

' In the New Zealand Expeditionary Force he continues to wear the familiar khaki and green puggaree, and, as a relic of his Territorial connection, he may have N.Z.M.R. on his shoulder, but he wears neither spurs nor riding breeches. And if you were to confront him with a post-and-rail fence or a water jump, he would simply give his tank a little extra throttle and barge right through. For he is no longer Mounted Rifles; he is "Div. Cav." Divisional Cavah-y. He rides tanks, or Bren gun carriers, or motor cycles. Yet he remains a trooper, and, with variations of number, his regiment retains its former organisation into squadrons and troops. On the whole it is a happy compromise with necessity, in that it retains as much as possible of the old Mounted Rifle comradeship and espirit de corps upon which to build the new loyalty —of man to machine, and., through that, to the mechanised unit. Old mounted men, with memories of the lighting in South Africa and Palestine, might be critical of the modern trooper, who possibly cannot even ride; but those who have seen him take six tons and a half of lumbering steel up a rough hillside, or drive it all night over the desert in enemy territorj-, know him to be built of the same stuff as of old. The cavalry with the N.Z.EF., like the infantry, included reinforcements, and their full utiisaltion has necessitated a certain amount of improvisation. Some of the men are being trained as motor cyclists, others as machine gunners. If you would go with the Div. Cav. on one of our N.Z.E.F. field exercises, you must needs be prepared for early starts and late finishes* but you would! have the satisfaction of knowing that you were out in front in attack and covering the rear in retreat. And you could not but be impressed by the enthusiasm, sound sense and strict attention to the job shown by all ranks. One of the reasons for that is doubtless the relative smallness of the unit—when compared, for instance, with an infantry battalion. It is easier for every man to realise the importance of his own personal part in a show when all can be explained to him, sitting among the bracken in the sun, by his commanding officer. Another reason >s that all the officers and most of the senior N.C.O.\s are fiom the Mounted Rifles regiments of the Territorials. And a third, perhaps the most important of all, is that all of these men are on the sort ol job they like. The horseman, although regretting the parting from his horse, keeps at least his cavalry organisation, much of his former cavalry movements, and his regimental friendships. To the new type of tjooper a motor engijic means almost as much as a horse meant to his comrade.

We were held up on the road when one of these, despatch riding, whizzed past at 05 miles an hour, "That's old So-and-So," said our corporal. ''M;ul as the3 r make them, but a wiz ard on a motor bike. And you should see him strip an engine!'-' The madness, it seemed, most- tolerantly condoned by his fellows, con sisted in preferring a machine to a horse.- Every branch of the Army, these d«ij s, wants motor drivers and

motor mechanics. The Div. Cav. want men with those qualifications and a little more —men who merge themselves with their machines, as a good horseman does with his horse, so that almost the two become one, and in a tight corner can be relied upon to act in unison. There is a trooper here who before the war had made his name on the broadsidiing tracks of New Zealand and Australia. And, appropriately, the two basic enthusiasms of the unit, one man's devotion to his horse and another's love of mechanical locomotion, are combined in the commanding officer, who was among the foremost motor cyclists racing on the Christcliurch beaches. The Div. Cav.'s job on a "stunt" is chiefly one of reconnaissance and covering. Last week-end, when the moon was full and Hitler bragging about what he was going to do to Britain, our Force went out on its first full-scale tactical exercise. The cavalry went first, led by the tanks. The theory was that an enemy had landed at several points in the south of England, and advanced some miles inland. The New Zealand infantry brigades were ordered to occupy a defensive position across the line of advance, and the Covering Column was given the task of holding p forward ridge over against the enemy's front line until the infantry were in position. In this case the Bren gun carriers had a double job: tliat of protecting the rest of the Covering Column while it moved to position, and then assisting it to cover the infantry occupation.

Meanwhile tlie tanks had pushed out to the most forward position of all, where, cleverly hidden in the heart of patches of gorse, they swept with lire the whole of the open country in front of the enemy's line. The sergeant in charge 'was a clerk hack in New Zealand. To see him now one would think he had never known an office more conxmodious or more comfortable than the cramped inside of a fighting machine. He revels in the job, a job the like of which had probably never crossed his mind; when he walked into the recruiting office last spring. Others of the troop—odd that they arc not called "tankards"—are similarly keen. Stripes or no stripes, they are Sandy and Hec and Jimmy to their fellows and to half the rest of the squadron; and to our English instructors they are just beyond believing. Months of painstaking tuition are considered necessary to make a man a tank driver. Our fellows were out on the roads in ten days. They came clattering home, four crews of them, at two o'clock 3 r esterday morning, after having driven heard, without lights, since half-past nine, their only halts those they must make regularly as part of maintenance training. One coincided with an air-raid alarm. Even if they cannot sit a horse—and many of them can—these men will prove worthy of the finest traditions of the New Zealand Mounted Rifles.

Coming off the hill in the evening, the infantry now securely in position, the Div. Cav. were last and the tanks the last of them. In the field they are in constant touch with each other, and, with the commanding officer. Servicing and maintenance of vehicles is a vital part of routine duty. "What are you blokes doing to-day," asked a casual visitor from the infantry' headquarters ahead. "Nothing,replied a cheerful voice from underneath a Bren carrier, "We're in rest billets!" We were, in fact, bivouacked comfortably although somewhat moistly in the fern, and grimily checking over vehicles. Doubtless it didn't seem much to a footslogger who had been digging the better part of the night; but it was one of the unseen preparations that helped to earn the boys a pat on the back from the G.O.C. for. their part in next morning's operations. The Covering Column was to move immediately after breakfast and occupy a new forward defensive position in the path of a second presumed enemy force. Again the cavalry were in the van; and when the farthest tank reported itself in position, mils along the crest, before 10 o'clock, that was adjudged a smart performance. The tanks were out all night that night, the listening jjosts of our defence system on the watch, especially for parachutists.