TRAINING IN HOT WEATHER

Southland Times, Issue 24228, 11 September 1940, Page 6

TRAINING IN HOT WEATHER

NEW ZEALANDERS IN ENGLAND BATTALION’S ADVANCE ■ MANOEUVRE (From the Official War Correspondent attached to the New Zealand Forces in Great Britain) . ALDERSHOT, August 4.

The morning sun was hot oh 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. From the narrow and unfenced, although far-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 fem-filled gully another 300 odd; say half a mile in all. Half a mile of front across which the battalion was presently to advance.

INTELLIGENT DESPATCH RIDER 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 i.i 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 I can’t think there is another Army anywhere with such fine fellows as ours.”

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 come 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.

TROOPS IN EARNEST Looking back 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 c . 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 zigzags 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. The fresh-faced boys who were playing Indians only a handful of years I ago- are back at the game already; eager, watchful and very much in earnest.

Between these two classes are some who do not bother much. It is hot, and a long way to the objective, and there isn’t an enemy, really. Then forward again, weaving this way and that to take full advantage of the lie of the hill and of the shelter of t”i 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’tcare few. They forget the heat and the distance. They crouch lower. They glide forward, their khaki bodies part of the brown and purple hillside. They do not smile now at the make-believe 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 Bimam Wood did upon Macbeth. Up the farther 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 i another battalion advancing, and be- 1 hind it the third preparing to follow < and mop up; this is a brigade show. 1 Nearing the top. More than ever con- 1 cealed; more furtive in movement; ( slower. Hard to follow; now seen; now 1 imagined. Then not seen at all; and a ‘ message reporting “Position occupied!” ‘