Starting The Legion Of Frontiersmen

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 16, Issue 5, 9 October 1950, Page 3

Starting The Legion Of Frontiersmen

By Capt. John Cook Palmerston North.

Formation of voluntary defence units in British countries seemed a logical step to Captain Roger Pocoek, a fellow officer in the Boer War, and I when we met in England after the conflict in South Africa and discussed the military - unpreparedness which had led to many eai'ly defeats. Our decisions to form the body we named the Legion of Frontiersmen was the result.

By 1908 I was in New Zealand and in that year I initiated the meetings which culminated in the launching of a New Zealand unit of the legion. I became the first commandant and organiser. The legion of those days was a fairly exclusive organisation. To qualify for admission its members needed to be horsemen, to be able to shoot, and to have travelled in British-held territory. Our uniform differed considerably from the fashionable outfit worn by present-day frontiersmen. We chose tunics, riding breeches, putties and boots, and wore revolvers holstered at the hip. The 200 men who joined in the early years became highly proficient at the crafts they were expected to learn. Marksmanship reached an exceptional level. We made a habit of accuracy in firing revolvers from the hip through the bottoms of the holsters. Horsemanship improved steadily in friendly contests. Fieldcraft became close to' second nature. In short, we quickly fitted ourselves for active combat in the Jfighting conditions of those days and were fashioned into a serviceable and useful unit. To prepare ourselves for service in Arctic conditions we embarked on learning how to manage Husky sleddogs. The knowledge was an asset when Captain Scott called at Christchurch en route to the Antarctic. Several of his dogs contracted an illness which baffled the explorer’s expedition, but not so one of our number, “Mexican Jim” Russell. He diagnosed the trouble as due to faulty feeding and when that was corrected the expedition was able to leave without great delay.