MODERN CAVALRY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 August 1940, Page 8

MODERN CAVALRY

MECHANISATION OF ARMY

SECOND ECHELON IN TRAINING. TANKS REPLACE HORSES. (From the Official War Correspondent attached to the New Zealand Forces in Great Britain.) ALDERSHOT, July 24. Throughout military history the cavalryman has been bound to his unit and his fellows by a special bond; this common love of their horses. In New Zealand the mounted rifle volunteer or Territorial is first a horseman, then a soldier. None the less a good soldier on that account; in seme senses a better. One did sometimes wonder, however, what the trooper would see in the military life if ever he should be parted from his horse. Now they have been parted. There is little place in modern warfare for mounted troops. To pit them against tanks or the dive bomber would be worse than the Light Brigade’s charge of the Russian guns at Crimea. Nevertheless there remains great need for the qualities which made cavalry invaluable to British commanders in some of the famous campaigns of the past—mobility, surprise, speed, thrust in attack, concentrated hitting power for short periods. Thanks to “progress” the horse is no longer a military repository of those qualities: a motor vehicle, may be. So although the trooper has lost hi shorse, he remains mounted —over an internal combustion engine.

In the New Zealand Expeditionary Force he continues to wear the familiar khaki and green puggaree, and, as a relic of his Territorial connection, he may have N.Z.M.R. on his shoulder, but he wears neither spurs nor riding breeches. And if you were to confront him with a post-and-rail fence or a water jump, he would simply give his tank a little extra throttle and barge right through. For he is no longer Mounted Rifles; he is “Div. Cav.,” Divisional Cavalry- He rides tanks, or Gren gun carriers, or motorcycles. Yet he remains a trooper, and, with variations of number, his regiment retains its former organisation into squadrons and troops. On the whole it is a happy compromise with necessity, in that it retains as much as possible of the old Mounted Rifle comradeship and esprit de corps upon which to build the new loyalty—of man to machine, and, through that, to the mechanised unit. Old mounted men, with memories of the fighting in South Africa and Palestine, might be critical of the modern trooper, who possibly cannot even ride; but those who have seen him take six tons and a half of lumbering steel up a rough hillside, or drive it all night over the desert in enemy territory, know him to be built of the same stuff as of old. I

The cavalry with the N.Z.E.F., like the infantry, included reinforcements, and their full utilisation has necessitated a certain amount of improvisation. Some of the men are being trained as motor cyclists, others as ma-chine-gunners. If you would go with the Div. Cav. on one of our N.Z.E.F. field exercises, you must need be prepared for early starts and late finishes; but you would have the satisfaction of knowing that you wore out in front in attack and covering the rear in retreat. And you could not but be impressed by the enthusiasm, sound sense and strict attention to the job shown by all ranks. One of the reasons for that is doubtless the relative smallness of the unit —when compared, for instance, with an infantry battalion. It is easier for every man to realise the importance of his own personal part in a show when all can be explained to him, sitting among the bracken in the sun, by his commanding officer. Another reason is that all the officers and most of the senior N.C.O’s. are from the Mounted Rifles regiments of the Territorials. And a third, perhaps the most important of all, is that all of these men are on the sort of job they like. The horseman, although regrettting the parting from his horse, keeps at least his cavalry organisation, much of his former cavalry movements, and his regimental friendships. To the new type of trooper a motor engine means almost as much as a horse meant to his comrade.

DESPATCH RIDING. We were held up on the road when one of these, despatch riding, whizzed past at 65 miles an hour. “That's old So-and-so,” said our corporal. “Mad as they make them, but a wizard on a motor-bike. And you should see him strip an engine!” The madness, it seemed, mostly tolerantly, condoned by his fellows, consisted in preferring a machine to a horse. Every branch of the Army, these days, wants motor drivers and motor mechanics. The DiV. Cav. want men with those qualifications and a little more—men who merge themselves with their machines, as a good horseman does with his horse, so that almost the two become one, and in a tight corner can be relied upon to act in unison. There is a trooper here who before the war had made his name on the broadsiding tracks of New Zealand and Australia. And. appropriately, the two basic enthusiasms of the unit, one man's devotiton to his horse and another's love of mechanical locomation. are combined in the commanding officer, who was among the foremost motor-cyclists racing on the Christchurch beaches. The Div. Cav's. job on a “stunt” is chiefly one of reconnaissance and covering. Last weekend, when the moon was full and Hitler bragging about what he was going to do to Britain, our Force went out on its first fullscale tactical exercise. The cavalry went first, led by the tank's. The theory was that an enemy had landed at several points in the south, of England, and advanced some miles inland. The New Zealand infantry brigades were ordered to occupy a defensive position across the line of advance, and the Covering Column was given the task of holding a forward ridge over against the enemy's first line until the infantry were in position. In this case the Bren gun carriers had a double job: that of protecting the rest of ;he Covering Column while il moved to position, and then assisting il to cover the infantry occupation.

TANK’S PART. Meanwhile the tanks had pushed out to the most forward position of all. where, cleverly hidden in the heart of patches of gorse, they swept with fire the whole of the open country in front of the enemy's line. The sergeant in charge was a clerk back in New Zealand. To sec him now one would think he had never known an office more commodious or more comfortable than the cramped inside of a fighting-ma-chine. He reveals in the job. a job the like of which had probably never crossed his mind when he walked into

the recruiting office last spring. Others of the troop—odd that they are not called “tankards" —are similarly keen. Stripes or no stripes, they are “Sandy” and Hec.” and “Jimmy” to their fellows and to half the rest of the squadron; and to our English instructors they are just beyond believing. Months of painstaking tuition are considered necessary to make a man a tank driver. Our fellows were out on the roads in ten days. They came clattering home, four crews of them, at two o’clock yesterday morning, after having driven hard, without lights, since half-past nine, their only halts those they mustmake regularly as part of maintenance training. One coincided with an airraid alarm. Even if they cannot sit a horse—and many of them can- —these men will prove worthy of the finest traditions of the New Zealand Mounted Rifles.

Coming off the hill in the evening, the infantry now securely in position, the Dix. Cav. were last and the tanks the last of them. In the field they are in constant touch with each other, and, with the commanding officer. Servicing and maintenance of vehicles is a vital part of routine duty. “What are you blokes doing today?” asked a casual visitor from the infantry headquarters ahead. “Nothing,” replied a cheerful voice from underneath a bren carrier. “We're in rest billets’!’ We were, in fact, bivouacked comfortably although somewhat moistly in the fern, and grimily checking over vehicles. Doubtless it didn’t seem much to a footslogger who had been digging the better part of the night; but it was one of the unseen preparations that helped to earn the boys a pat on the back from the G.O.C. for their part in next morning’s operations. The Covering Column was to move immediately after breakfast and occupy a new forward defensive position in the path of a second presumed enemy force.. Again the cavalry were in the van; and’when the farthest tank reported itself in position, miles along the crest, before ten o'clock, that was adjudged a smart performance. The tanks were out all night that night; the listening posts of our defence system on the watch, especially for parachutists.

ANOTHER ACTION. Next day, after an exchange of positions between the Covering Column and the improvised Mixed Brigade—our friends the Maoris would have to bivouack that night in the sparse shelter of a windswept hilltop—there was another cavalry action. The “infantillery,” entrenched against frontal attack, were unsupported on one flank. Accordingly the squadron was told off to protect that flank, which it did by establishing Bren gun posts to cover all approaches. One carrier, its gun mounted ready for action, was held in reserve. This again was an all-night job, with the tanks on call in case they should be needed. That finished the fighting side of the exercise. In the forenoon, our fifth since leaving camp, the men looked again to their vehicles; then after lunch turned them over to i skeleton crews so that the bulk of the squadron could share in the route march back to embussing point. Musn’t let the infantryman get the notion that he alone can march! Throughout the exercise motor-cyc-lists were übiquitous and invaluable — running despatches, maintaining touch with vehicles, patrolling routes and directing the convoy. There is a message to go to headquarters, orders to withdraw to be communicated to such-and-such a troop, a heavy and bulky spare part for a tank to be collected from Ordnance three counties distant. Send a cyclist! He'll get through; and he’ll get back again, without any waste lime.

It is only a scratchy impression, this, of what the Div. Cav. does. Nothing about how it lives. Nor about its being the only unit to get paid in the field — an example that others will copy next time. Nothing about the sergeantmajor’s going off the hill and down into the village when the boys ran out of smokes, and buying on their collective behalf the entire stock of two pubs and the only store. Nothing, either, of the Major’s asking us whether we would prefer stew or a dry tea halfway along the route of our routemarch, of our all yelling “Stew!” of the quartermaster’s quietly efficient “0.K.,” and of its being stew, steaming hot and in apparently unrationed abundance, ten minutes alter we got there.

Nothing of all these little things, which, typical of scores more, account for the splendid team spirit of the unit. Yet maybe enough to show that a mounted rifleman’s lot is not so bad after all. despite his having had to leave his horse grazing in a home padclock.