INFANTRYMAN’S BURDEN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 January 1940, Page 6

INFANTRYMAN’S BURDEN

4 ROLE IN PRESENT WAR. All. hopes that the modern infantryman would evolve into a lightlyequipped individual soldier who could jump in and out of mechanised vehicles have been dissipated by the practical experience gained in France by the British Expeditionary Force, writes a military correspondent in the “Manchester Guardian.’’ Bad weather has proved that tjie infantryman is still a beast of burden in the sense that he must carry his own food to the trenches and outposts, he must dig his own defences, he must transport his ammunition, tools, hand grenades, greatcoats, and whatever is required for his own comfort. In other spheres of war the ideal of a "light infantryman’’ might have been attained, but it can never happen in the battlefields of Western Europe. In spite of this small handicap, the British infantryman of today is maintaining the grand tradition of his arm. After intense training at home he is now going over-, seas as a master in the use of the Bren gun, the rifle, the bayonet, two and three-inch mortars, and the anti-tank rifle—a weapon which has already become the envy of all beholders.