FIELD TACTICS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 November 1939, Page 4

FIELD TACTICS

RIFLE BATTALION GOING TO WAIOURU DAY & NIGHT EXERCISES IN OPEN COUNTRY. PRELIMINARIES AT TRENTHAM. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON. This Day. Sleeping out on the tussocks, digging trenches, marching by night and at-tacking—-these are some of the tastes of real warfare conditions that troops of the 19th Wellington (Rifle) Battalion under Lieut.-Colonel S. Varnham. M.C., E.D., will have when they go to Waiouru camp, near Taihape, at the end of the month. With divisional mechanised cavalry from Auckland and engineers from Ngaruawahia there will be approximately 1700 men engaged in these field' training manoeuvres over a fortnight. At Trentham the rifle battalion is being sharpened up for this test by means of night manoeuvres and other military exercises. Whereas at Trentham the men have been operating in platoons and companies, at Waiouru they will work as a complete unit. The country is ideal for such maneouvres. Undulating, with flats and hills, and covered with tussock and snow grass, it covers 50,000 to 80,000 acres and extends 24 miles in length. A canvas camp to accommodate 1700 is being built at Waiouru with cookhouses, stores and other similar buildings in permanent materials. Roads are also being constructed in the camp. With their ground-sheets alone between them and the earth and the issue blanket to cover them, the men will sleep out four or five nights during the 14 days. They will dig and occupy trenches, consolidate ground won after mimic attacks, march on objectives by night and follow with attacks and generally get as near as possible in practice to the real thing. Ball ammunition will be issued and for days the bare country and hills round the camp will resound to the discharge of hundreds of rifles and other small arms. The men will go direct from Trentham to Waiouru by rail.