Second Echelon to go to Camp January 12

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 308, 30 December 1939, Page 7

Second Echelon to go to Camp January 12

RECRUITS STILL WANTED I J er Press Association. AUCKLAND, Dec. 29. The second echelon of the Special Military Force is to he mobilised in all camps throughout New Zealand on January 12. Officers posted to the echelon have been in camp since early November, while prospective noncommissioned officers began their training at the beginning of December. It is stated that all men concerned in the mobilisation of the second echelon will be notified individually in ample time for them to report on January 12. Men are still being recruited for this detachment and to provide a nucleus for the third. There are vacancies in practically all units. “ECHELON’’—ITS MEANING Apparently four people our of five (the other doesn’t earel) are curious about the term “echelon” which is being applied to the successive divisions of the New Zealand Special Force. In the South African war they were “contingents”; in the Great War, the Main Body and Reinforcements. Now it is

“echelons.” It is a term which it seems had to define and no reason for its adoption has been given, but the military profession has its jargon, and is quite ready to adopt, adapt, or create a word or a phrase, to tho confusion of the purists. The word echelon is a French word, fully Anglicised, but with a hybrid pronunciation; it retains the French sound for the “ ch ” but the English final “ n ” and is pronounced “eshelon,” with the accent on the first syllable.

The belief that the word is not a military one is quite wrong; it is nothing else. It derives from tho French word for “ladder,” and troops aro In echelon when they are in parallel lines or groups so placed that the front of

each is clear of the one in front of it —a sort of ladder formation. The Navy has adopted the term to mean ships moving in a wedge or “V” arrangement..