HIGH QUALITY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24399, 10 September 1940, Page 8

HIGH QUALITY

NEW ZEALAND SOLDIERS PRIDE OF THEIR BRIGADIERS MIMIC WARFARE DESCRIBED* (From the Official War Correspondent attached to the New Zealand Forces in Great Britain.) ■ ALDERSHOT, Aug. 4. The forenoon sun was hot on the uplands of the moor. As our boots kicked pollen from the bell-heather blossoms, and roused swarms of flies, we were thankful for the relative comfort of battle-dress, thick woollen cloth though it was. If only one need not wear his respirator (•" gas-mask" to civilians) at .the alert—high upon his chest and tied tightly to him; if his pack, carried UDon the sweatiest part of his back, need not be surmounted by a rolled anti-gas cape, and underlaid by web equipment weighted with side-arms and water-bottle; if the collar of this tunic were only a little freer about the neck —in short, if one were dressed for a walking holiday, this would be a glorious and grouseless morning. But there are few walking holidays in England this summer; and, anyway, it would have been mighty cold at 3 o'clock this morning, trying to sleep in shorts and an open-neck shirt, with one blanket and a great coat and only the stars overhead. On balance over the whole 24 hours, most of us would prefer battle-dress. From the narrow and unfenced, although tar-sealed, road on our right to the dip on our left where the land fell away, was perhaps 500 yards; from the lip of the dip to the creek at the bottom of the fer_n-filled gully another 300 odd; say, half a mile in all—half a mile of front across which the battalion was presently to advance. "You're back in 1916 now," said the Maori major with the umpire's band on his arm. "This is the old style, the real thing." He grinned in remembrance of a 24-year-old joke and addressed a pakeha officer in front-line French. They wore the same decoration, won in the same year. "No,'' said the brigadier. It was not quite 1916 over again. . It was an exercise in adapting to modern conditions the tactics which proved so successful then. In the last few, days the boys had demonstrated a remarkable faculty for grasping the essentials of new movements and new methods of warfare. Now he wished to try them in a variant of the old methods. ~ : .

Our brigadiers are tremendously proud of the men of the Second N.Z.E.F. Sometimes,.but only rarely, they say so in as many words. More often the pride comes out ; in their casual conversation and in their actions. They put their commands through stiff new tests, their minds a conflict, one suoposes, of confidence and doubt. And then, when the confidence has been justified .and the doubts dissipated, they say quietly, "These are grand fellows," and go on to another exercise, to consolidate the quality of the troops and prove it afresh. Individual and Composite That quality is individual as well as composite, and common to all ranks. Successful training of soldiers consists in something more than teaching men to do what they are told. They must know what they are doing, and it is desirable that they should know also why they are told to do it so. The New Zealander might offer a problem to an officer who gave obviously wrong orders, or who gave any kind of orders stupidly. He is most assuredly not, as sometimes he has been represented, a soldier who objects to obeying orders for no other reason than that they are orders. Given an officer whose ability and intelligence he respects, and shown an outline of the movement in which he is to participate, he is equal to the world's best at carrying out instructions. And very few of- our officers fall short of this standard. On the other hand, a notably large percentage of n.c.o.'s and men are fit for officers' responsibilities.

On recent manoeuvres a New Zealand brigadier, guest of one of the landowners over whose properties we were exercising, was awakened in the early hours of the morning by the arrival of a despatch rider from the forward troops—a cavalry trooper. Shown into the commander's bedroom, the trooper delivered his message and waited for a reply. He was questioned in detail about the' night operation to which the message referred, and explained it at length. While they were talking, the brigadier in bed and the trooper in overalls and goggles by his side, a maid entered with morning tea. " Here,--" said the officer. " You have far more need of this than I have. Go to it. And then get back and have some sleep." It was still early when the brigadier came down to the bivouac area for breakfast. He knew all about what had been happening forward. _" So-and-so sent a message," he explained; " but I got the full story from his despatch rider. That man—l don't know his name; he'd been up all night, and he was dead tired; yet he described the entire movement step by step just as if he were a highly-trained intelligence officer. One mustn't make comparisons; but 1 can't think there is another army anywhere with such fine fellows as ours" On the Moor Back on the moor. They are all ready now, each company with its sector of advance and its platoons waiting in spearhead formation; sections within the platoon similarly arranged. They are to go forward in single file over the first rise and down into the saucer beyond. Then they will fan out and advance in line, because on breasting the next rise they will coma under enemy fire from the positions they are to assault on the far hill. Orders are to take that hill and the road running along its summit, and to send forward outposts to hold the approach roads on the far side. Umpires are posted all the way up, ready to knock out as casualties men who do not take adequate cover or precautions. Looking blck 300 yards, to where the heather melts into young, green fern, there is little to be seen. But the whole battalion is there. At the colonel's whistle the fern parts and starts forward. Out of the short heather the sun is hotter than ever. It glints brokenly on the fixed bayonets of rifles at the short trail, and soon has made tin hats too hot to touch with comfort, A company commander passes abreast of us, 10 paces or so ahead of his forward section. Somebody remarks that he ought, in a movement of this sort, to be directing the advance from the rear. Possibly so, but that is not his idea. He zig-zags forward almost on all fours, then flops into a ready-made shallow trench, and wriggles round to see how his men are coming on. The old soldiers among them keep down by instinct. Then forward again, weaving this way and that to take full advantage of the lie of the hill and of the shelter of an occasional boulder. Over the first crest on their stomachs, for fear of being seen on the skyline below, and down into the saucer. Already the spirit of adventure is infecting the don't-care few. They forget the heat and the distance. They crouch lower. They glide forward, their khaki bodies nart of the brown and purple hillside. They do not smile now at the makebelieve of the Indian-playing youngsters who have masked their helmets and shoulders with heather and fern, so that when they move it is as if the moor moved, as Birman Wood did upon Macbeth

Up the further slope and into the field of fire. Going forward in line now; a wavy disjointed line that comes and goes as we watch from the rear; a line as near as can be invisible to anyone watching from the front. Behind us another battalion advancing, and behinu it the third preparing to

follow and mop up; this is a brigade show. Nearing the top. More than ever concealed; move furtive in movement; slower. Hard to follow: now seen: now imagined. Then not seen at all; and a message reporting " Position occupied." Men Who Served in 1914-1918 „ "Only mimic warfare," you oldtimers may say. Yes. no getting away from that. The same thing might have been done—though the country and vegetation would have been different —-at Waiouru, or in Centra] Otago, or on the hills behind Nelson. But you won't deny that it is good training for the real thing, come when and where it may; doubly good if it should be coming here in England. After all, there are a good many of you here with us: men who served last time, and for a long time, anywhere between the North Sea and the Jordan Valley; who carry some of the scars that you carry and were perhaps lucky to hid? their disabilities from the doctors this time. Maybe we could do with more of you; that's not for me to say. To a casual eye, the Australians have more. Ido know that most of your comrades here stand high in the esteem of ihe youngsters and of the middle generation—they know all the tricks and can teach them!—and that none of them is other than keen on the advanced training the boys are doing. Mimic war it may be, but modelled on the real thing by men who have experienced that. Thirty-six hours before this day advance, the same three battalions had launched a night offensive against the other 'brigade, There were some mistakes on both sides; there were movements not as well carried out as they might have been. But against that, there was a remarkably high level of general enthusiasm, even at those, hours of the night whe"n enthusiasm is normally at a low ebb. And time and again the umpires noted commendable initiative. Senior officers with wide experience last time say these troops are just about as ready for battle as it will be possible to make them without actual experience of battle. I