A.I.F. SIX-FOOTERS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 September 1940, Page 6

A.I.F. SIX-FOOTERS

“TINY” AND “LOFTY” AGAIN. LONDON MARCH RECALLED. Among the fighting men of the victorious Allied armies who marched through London in a procession of triumph on July 7, 1919. were one hundred Australians. Each man was over six feet tall. One of these soldiers was Robert Anderson.

Once more Anderson is in England as a member of the Australian forces, says Kenneth Slessor, official correspondent with the A.I.F. in Britain, in a despatch recently released in New Zealand by the Australian Trade Commissioner.

This time Anderson is Sergeant-Ma-jor Anderson, of Headquarters Camp, A.LF., somewhere ,in Britain —“and with a bit_of luck,”'he says, “I’ll be there with ninety-nine others in the same kind of march at the end of this war."

“Will they have any' trouble getting six-footers again?” I asked.

“Don’t you worry,” he answered, “there’s plenty more in this lot.” “Which are you?” I asked “Tiny or Lofty?” He answered: “All the A.I.F. men more than six feet are known either as 'Tiny’ oi- ‘Lofty.’ I'm ‘Lofty.’ Igo at 6 feet 31 inches in my bools and 6 feet 7 inches with my hat on. But that's nothing. In the 1919 march they numbered us oft’ by height, and I was number 32.”

Sergeant-Major Anderson took pleasure in telling Field Marshall Lord Birdwood of his part in the historic procession when the veteran soldier paid a recent visit to A.I.F. camps. Though born in Victoria, SergeantMajor Anderson spent 17 years in Western Australia, mostly at Mount Lawley, Bayswater and Kalgoorlie. It is curious how Western Australia, seems to breed them big—trees or men. Another man from that State in the Headquarters Camp is 6 feet 2 inches and most of the other ‘Tinies’ and ‘Lofties’ come from the same State. Ser-geant-Major Anderson fought in the last war with the 7th Battalion in Flanders. He left Belgium in the last troop train to carry Australian troops. After the war he joined the Permanent Australian Army (and he was a Warrant Officer, General Staff, until April, 1937. He wears the colours of the long service and good conduct medals with 1914-1918 colours..

I asked how he found modern army life compared with that of the last war. "There is not much difference, he says, "but if some of the last lot could see the transports given to us this time they’d have a lit. There is not much difference in the fellows, and the spirit is just the same. At one of the ports of call this time. I watched the lads doing the same things as I did there 20 vears ago.” “Today, also ‘Lofty’ treads the same ground where he and other Australians were camped in Britain in 1917. He can report that there is no change here, either. There are at least 50 diggers of the last war at the Headquarters Camp alone.