"GRASSHOPPERS"

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 54, 18 May 1942, Page 2

"GRASSHOPPERS"

"PEOPLE'S ARMY" AUSTRALIA'S HOME CUARD High army officers have stated that the Volunteer Defence Corps—Australia's Home Cuard —is a "static defence" body which might be called upon in any area to take offensive action against an attempted enemy encroachment. They call us "grasshoppers," do the beys in khaki, because some of us have been issued with uniforms of green, with Digger hats, military boots and gaiters, wrote a member of the V.D.C. in the Melbourne Argus. They say that we were first formed as a unit to keep the returned soldiers of the last Avar quiet during the present one. Sometimes they make; jokes about old gentlemen crawling around suburban paddocks en Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings, improvising their gear because they have to wait until the front-line fighters have been equipped and adequate reserves stored up. We sit back and take it. We have a job to do. and we do it without pay, without expectation of any particular glory, but because Australia is in a scrap and it is there to be done. Many wear the medal ribbons of the last war, and are not young—but not all. Indeed, the proportion of last-war soldiers was growing smaller, a.nd the ranks were filling with young men in reserved occupations, others exempt from the call-up, and specialists prepared to make their "civvie" knowledge and skill available. The revision of the reserved occupation list and the new callriip may make a difference to that, but we shall carry on.

A Few Little Surprises In. one way, avc might claim to represent the real morale of Australia. Russia's '"people's armj T " playecii an; important part in. stopping the Nazis at the gates of Moscow andi Leningrad. Malaya and Singapore had little or no "people's army" to back up the fighting forces. But we are the necleus of an Australian "people's army." If we can do anything about it. we do not propose to haive any "infiltration" or "fifth columnists" or parachute troops dropping here and there, or "flying columns spreading panic and disorganisation in the rear." We have a few. little .surprises for infiltrators, paratroops, fifth columnists rind Hying columns, but the enemy w ilil have to (ind. out about them. Some of them may not come off, but some will, provide nasty 1 shocks. In recent large scale military manoeuvres "somewhere in Victoria" the army commands were hurt when they found that local V.D.C. units, with intimate knowledge, of the terrain andi conditions, were hours ahead of the official intelligence sections with their information. Some weeks ago the guard on one of our biggest airfields was warned that there might be an attack on the station at any moment and to be in readiness. A V.D.C. unit, using gutters, hedges, concealment, and; a final storming from an unexpected quarter, instead of recognised advances and a frontal attack, captur-l ed the airfield in theory almost without loss. That sort of thing is going on all over Australia. It is a pity that there are so few of us. A million or so, determined, enough, would make life a misery for an invader. We are not the people who win battles, that is the job of the army and R.A.A.F., but Ave can make the battles easier to win.