“TOMMIES” OF TO-DAY

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20109, 1 December 1939, Page 2

“TOMMIES” OF TO-DAY

OLD WAYS CHANGED SPIRIT THE SAME ARMY “ON ITS TOES” WESTERN FRONT, Oct. 18. The British Army is “on its toes,” and ig fully prepared to take and deliver blows, no matter with what lightning rapidity the enemy may strike. ‘‘The British soldier has always known in every age how to die for the honour of his country, and the men out here will do nothing to let down that tradition,” General Viscount Gort, Commander-in-Chief of the British Expedition Force, told war correspondents yesterday. British, French and American war correspondents, artists, and photographers, were entertained at lunch by Viscount Gort, in an atmosphere almost unbelievably calm. There were nine Americans present, and they were placed on exactly the same footing as the British, French and Dominion correspondents. The place where Viscount Gort and his senior staff officers unceremoniously received the correspondents was a small hotel in an historic town, which was reduced to a l-uin of rubble and bricks during the Great War, and which is situated behind the present British position. In some ways, it was not unlike what a similar occasion might have been in 1914; with the one big difference, that Viscount Gort and each of the senior staff officers with him were then junior regimental officers. In addition to Viscount Gort, who was a junior officer in the Guards Regiment in 1914, and who was four times wounded on this front, there were, the Chief of the General Staff, General H. R. Pownall, the AdjutantGeneral, and the QuartermasterGeneral, each of whom had won his spurs in the mud and danger of modern warfare, having been a junior leader in the front line in 1914. Two of them, including the Deputy Chief of Staff, General P. Neame, who was not present, won the Victoria Cross. The abyss which separated regimental officers and men from, the “brass hats” during the last war does not exist to-day, and it is not likely to reappear. Every senior “brass hat” of to-day was a mud-stained subaltern or company or battery commander 20 odd years ago. How Wars Are Won In the words of one officer, who saw much front-line fighting in the Great War, Viscount Gort's terse fighting speech at the luncheon to the correspondents; when lie emphasised that wars were won by men and not by machines, and by the spirit of the people both at the lighting front and on the home front, simply could not have been made by a General Officer Commanding 2r, years ago. But the speech was deeply significant of the difference between the British Expeditionary force in 1914 and the British Army in Franco to-day. '

“Tell your peoples,” he. said, “that wo stand four-square in the fight for freedom for all right-minded people.”

Viscount Oort's most incisive phrase was. “War consists of long periods of intense boredom, relieved by short periods of intense fear.”

After the speeches, four khaki-olad, saffron-kilted pipers from a famous Irish Regiment, with gas masks hanging over their shoulders, marched round the mess, piping Irish martial airs, among them “The Minstrel Boy.” Finally, they drew up at attention in front of Viscount Oort, mid each of them accepted a glass of whisky from his hands, and drank with him. As

they turned up their empty glasses they shouted: “Slainte!” (Good health.) Viscount Gort’s army would in many ways he unrecognisable by Dominion troops who knew the British Army in the Great War. “It isn’t the same army,” said a veteran reservist private, wryly, “You can speak to an officer notv.” Old School Shocked Officers who were brought up in the old school, and who have rejoined the army for the. new war, have to check their feelings nowadays when they suddenly see a subaltern addressing a colonel without being invited to do so. “When I left Sandhurst and joined my regiment in the trenches during the Great War, nobody spoke to me for three months,” said one officer. ‘‘l was utterly miserable—so miserable, in fact, that I went to live with the cooks. It is an utterly new army today.” Although officers who were brought up in the old school watch a little anxiously to see whether the new system is going to work —after all, they point out, the old system turned out some pretty good men —they hope that it will work, for they realise that modern warfare demands so much independence and initiative from the individual, the subaltern, the section leader, and even the private, that the old system had to change. Listening to such officers discussing the new army one is reminded how, In recent years, Captain Liddell Hart, tho military commentator, has increasingly contended that the modern army demands much the same kind of discipline as that which existed in tho Australian and Canadian Armies throughout tho Great War. The soldier of to-day fights in a “pillbox” alone, or with two or three companions, where he cannot ask for instructions, or in a truck, which may be detached from his unit, or In planes, many of which are piloted by non-commissioned officers. In addition, weapons and other equipment are vastly more cimplicated to-day than in the Great War, and the greater necessity for concealment means added isolation and responsibility for junior leaders. It is the urgent needs of modern warfare that have produced the new discipline that inspires Britain’s new army.

When Viscount Gort departed by car after the luncheon, he watched an Irish Regiment in full battle order, will) mechanised sections, march through tho town, the regimental pipers playing “Killaloo," “The Orange Sash,’’ and “The Irish Lassie.”