ON SALISBURY PLAIN.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 172, 29 December 1914, Page 6

ON SALISBURY PLAIN.

NEW ZEALAXDERS' CAM]'. GETTING RBADY TO FIGHT. London, November 11. The 200 Anglo-New Zealanders noxr in camp on Salisbury Plains may be regarded as tin? pioneers of the 'first expeditionary force; and they finely represent the spirifc with which '.New Zealand went into this matter. In the ranks are all classes. Men of wealth and case have given up their motors and flats to shoulder rifles, to do fatigue; Rhodes scholars, filled with the atmosphere of Oxford, are sleeping on hard floors alongside strike leaders; clerks, mechanics, and artists are there; and the leading sergeant of the company is Lancelot B, Todd, the well-] mown Rugby footballer, who has been playing for Wigan for some time past. ' Wrigley is Jtlioro too-i Amongst the ofTieers aro Captin F. 11. Lampen, who in these days of friendliness with Russia, may soon bo permitted to wear the medal and the cross of St. George, which he earned witli the Russians in the campaign against tho Japanese; Captain Donald Simson, a new Zealander of the Boer War, who has since thrived in South Africa, and has interrupted a tour of European waterworks to take up the sword again; Captain Wright, of tho Taranaki Rilles; Lieutenant Fitzlierbert, 1 who served with one of our |South African contingents; and so on, Salisbury Plain, even in times of peace, may be regarded as the heart of the British Army in being. Here every arm is constantly in evidence; and to-day it is just the same tiling but on such an immensely greater scale that tlio plain has become dotted witli towns like busy and orderly mining camps ■sprung up in tho night. Every alternates crest of the rolling downs shows some, evidence of the new activity, for it is expected that within a few weeks there will lie a quarter of a million men living here. A service railway has been run into the heart of the Plains, and here, and there, at spaces of perhaps a mile apart, are rows of neat hutments of corrugated iron, which arc being put together with feverish haste to accommodate the, new arrivals. Bulford station is no longer a sort of little I'likerua. If !-■ ;i busy military entrepot piled high v. : f : i material and crowded with soldi', i ; of all arms passing in and out.

A mile the, permanent linen on the plain is the Klin?,' Plantation, on the near side of wliicli the New Zenlanders first went into c-amp and suffered the first frosts of winter under canvas. The plain has a suh-soil of chalk, fortunately. only half a spade's depth down, and the water dries up quickly; But it was not very comfortable ill those earlv days; and ■when an enterprising scout ascertained that on the other side of the plantation hutments worn arising from the ground, a night march was at once decided npoi); and the 20 marched in and took possession of tlie half-finished habitations. Fatigue work was cheerfully undertaken Ui complete the dwellings, and the contingent expanded proudly into about a dozen hutments, each capable of accommodating 30 men, and all well lined and provided with stores for heating. One Mr Moore-Tones, the Auckland artist, has painted .suitable scenes for a theatre. Another is a dry canteen, where New Zealand papers are filed, and Anally there is a wet canteen where most of the drinking is done by people who are not New Zealanders at all. The contingent has an excellent name for sobriety. Four times a day a sack full of mails goes to and from the military posf. o,flice; and every mail brings in a consignment of cohort; from !'rio::.;s of the men.