WAY OF THE ARMY

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 36, 12 February 1931, Page 11

WAY OF THE ARMY

[RUSH AND BUSTLE

TRENTHAM TO NAPIER

(By "The Post's" Special Reporter.) NAPIEB, 11th February. Officers and men of the permanent staff of the New Zealand Defeinie Force, like the naval men, did their job and said very little about it. .In •fact they have until to-day declined to discuss their work beyond saying, "We just got into it." . A "Post" reporter, had a talk "with Captain Davis, of Wellington, and his brief account of the "work of the first day and night is a- story of rush and bnstia carried to success only by the fact that the handful of men who did the job started out from Wellington on an organised basis and carried on according to orders. For some days prior to-.tho earthquake, said Captain Davis, single .men of the permanent force had been in isamp at Trentham undergoing a special intensive course of training, and thus when advice • was received from headquarters at Wellington of ■the disaster which had overtaken Napier and Hastings, the camp was able to go ahead at once with the trucking of-14,000 blankets-and 500 tents which headquarters had instructed should be; rushed to Napier. That •work was completed by 3 p.m., and the remainder of the equipment required for the establishment of a camp on a big scale was entrained and was sent, to Wellington at 7.30 p.m. "I don't know what sort of performances have been established in thati lino bofore," said Captain Davis, "but we did moderately well. I think wo were in Wellington in half an hour. The railway people co-operated and assisted in every possible way, and at 8.30 p.m. we got away from Thorndon. On arrival at Palmerston North we notified Waipukurau that wo would require lorry transport from there, and on our arrival there we found that the Waipukurau people had, from somewhero or other, got together a fleet of about forty vehicles. They lent most valuable aid in untrucking the equipment, Rnd within an hour and a quarter a convoy of 38 trucks, light and heavy, got away on the road." Inside two hours all but one of the fconvoy were at Nelson Park. TESTING A BBIDCffI. Only one incident stood out from the feeneral thrill of covering stTange Toads-in a roaring hurry, and that was when they were advised that a bridge Bear Hastings had gone down a foot under the last car to cross it. '.'We sent over the lightest of the fleet, and nothing happened, and we kept the heaviest till the last. It was a case of ftio for it,' and those Waipukuran (drivers were game all through." The first work was done at Nelson Park at a quarter to six, continued Captain Davis; and the Trentham contingent, .by evening, with but little assistance, had. provided tent and bedcling accommodation for 3500 people, had brought in a water supply for immediate requirements, and had three field cookers in action. Over 2300 •people were put up that night. With .the camp established, the military authorities handed over much of the activity to civil committees and organisations, and on Thursday the •transport committee workers, nurses, (Salvation Army, Bed Cross, and other organisations were getting into their ptfride. ■