FIELD EXERCISES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 August 1940, Page 6

FIELD EXERCISES

NEW ZEALANDERS BUSY IN ENGLAND

ROUTE MARCH PRODUCES SOME SORE FEET.

VISIT TO WINDSOR CASTLE.

(Received This Day, 12.50 p.m.)

(From the Official War Correspondent attached to the New Zealand Forces in Britain). LONDON. August 9.

After three field exercises in three weeks, the New Zealand Expeditionary Force will spend next week in camp, concentrating on unit drill in preparation for another full-scale field manoeuvre in the week following. A. route march of infantry, MajorGeneral Freyberg’s references to which in opening the New Zealand Forces Club drew good-humoured laughter from the participants, disclosed some laxity in care of the feet, but, taken generally, instances of feet giving out were relatively few and not serious.

Avoidable crocking on the march is regarded primarily as a reflection on a man's platoon commander, who is responsible for instruction in the care of the foot. Typical of the quick recoveries that had been made is that of an eighteen-year-old private who returned to camp with 24 blisters in various stages. He was heard this morning lamenting that there was no further twenty miles today, as he wished to chalk up a hundred miles for the week. As a matter of fact, although the distance actually marched was 83 miles, many men probably completed the hundred by the addition of evening strolls for exploratory and other purposes.

Four hundred travelled by bus this afternoon to Windsor Castle under the auspices of the Y.M.C.A., which is organising a series of such trips to scenic and historic places. Sixty to seventy men were the guests in the afternoon and evening of private hostesses resident in the districts surrounding the camps.