HAWKE'S BAY HAS AN ARMY: Things Are Happening In The Home Guard

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 135, 23 January 1942, Page 6

HAWKE'S BAY HAS AN ARMY:

Things Are Happening In The Home Guard

(By

The Listener's Special Representative

| Hs is the story of the Home Guard of Hawke’s Bay. We print it because we have been able to verify it for ourselves. But the men we have seen in action would be the first to point out that there are other Home Guard stories from other districts that would sound just as impressive.

N army without uniforms; an A army that spends more time among the hills than on the parade-ground; soldiers for whom discipline means a great deal, but who ignore non-essentials; an army without many weapons; an army almost without equipment; soldiers who watch by day over sheep, make up prescriptions, add accounts, grow fruit, gather eggs, or teach in schools; an old clothes army-that is the Home Guard. Everybody knows that the Home Guard has been the starved younger child of our military forces; not, deliberately starved of course, but left hungry just the same. It has worked without nearly everything it officially has néeded. It has even worked without money. It has survived successive stages of disappointment. It survived being a hopeless idea.-It survived being funny. It survived the stage of wooden rifles. It survived the derision and ignominy brought upon it by a nation which then-and even now-did not fully realise that this is a shooting war in which shells burst, bombs really fall, men die, and women,: too, with their children. All these things the Home Guard survived. Not every man yet has a rifie. Only a few have uniforms, and not many of the lucky ones will agree to wear them until all their comrades are similarly provided. As this is written, the Director-General of those many thousands of men himself works in his office in a civilian’s grey suit, instead of the khaki and scarlet hat-band he could wear. Some of the men haven't even shotguns. Until recently, no unit was adequately financed, except by its own private efforts. The list of deficiencies is -a mile long and ertenaes only inch by But the Home Guard is dangerous. This story is- written about the Home Guard in Hawke’s Bay. Elsewhere there may be units more efficient, or less efficient. But it so happened recently that Hawke's Bay assembled a large number of men willing to spend their holiday period in bivouacs, and I went along to see them with the National Film Unit, which will soon release a film showing what we saw. We saw that every man,was armed. It is true that they have insufficient

rifles. Those who have not been issued with rifles have shot guns, which they turn into miniature cannons by removing the shot from cartridges and substituting a leaden slug, or even candlegrease moulded in. At considerable ranges, a slug of melted candle will shatter a thick board. If they have neither rifle nor shotgun, they have a fine selection of extemporised weapons, from a knife to a home-made bomb. Every Man Has Something That is the unofficial picture. That is the story of defenceless citizens arming themselves. A word about the official picture before we go on with the story. With official impetus, the arming of ‘the Home Guard is wonderfully improved since it came under Army control. We saw one unit with a reconditioned machine-gun. It was captured during the last war, retained somewhere as a souvenir, and has now been discovered, partly remodelled, and issued for duty. It is good. It is one of many others. In Hawke’s Bay, they have searched the district for such souvenirs as that Spandau, and found many. Army. armourers recondition them as fast as they are sent in, and the local Home Guard receives the benefit of its find. Nearly all the units now have Tommy Guns. They are not issued to all the personnel, but there are sufficient for every man to learn their use, and sufficient .for eyery company to have its fire-power multiplied considerably. These are going out in a growing stream. ~ :

Many times has the Home Guard been disappointed over the problem of uniforms. It is now a year since first it was announced that Territorial units would be re-clothed and the Home Guard uniformed with their service dress. Since then unanticipated difficulties have deferred the day. Now, stocks are building up so that soon there will be sufficient uniforms to make an issue worth while. It will not be long before the arm bands become superfluous. Weakness Becomes Strength In this and ‘many other details we gained the impression that things were happening in the Home Guard. A problem arises. Right, something is done about it. If it cannot be met in the ordinary way, the Home Guard throws aside the text books and does it in the usual way. It gets done, Many faults

remain uncorrected. That is only because correction is not at present ~ / humanly or practically possible. 2 Much is possible to the small unit or the indiyidual that is not possible for the big organisation, That hds been the strength of the Home Guard, although it has for 18 months appeared to have been its. weaknéss. From the days of its formation until recent months the Home Guard was not officially recognised by the Army. It still keeps healthily clear of forms and the flatulence of hindering precedents and regulations. Then, it had none at all. Where men had brains and the en-

thusiasm to use them, the Home Guard built itself, and built strongly, out of farms, and villages, towns, and townships. It grew among the hills and behind country hedges; it sprouted out of offices and schools all through the country; and it grew so strongly that it pushed aside all the growth of doubt and derision that held us back in New Zealand until last month we first were really made aware of the real war, The result we saw in Hawke’s Bay. Signals For 500 Miles \ t We saw members of signalling uni that are part of a province-wide system capable of sending and receiving messages over a distance of 500 miles, from hilltop to hilltop from Gisborne to Woodville. It began with one man who found a few others to help him. (Continued on next page)

(Continued from previous page) They began with scrapped telephones, which they reconditioned; with scrapped motor-cycle and motor-car headlights, which they turned into _ signalling lamps; with bits of wood and scraps of cloth, from which they made their own flags; with scrap metals and used wire, from which they made Morse buzzers. Some of their bigger home-made lamps will signal over 30 miles. One has, in fact, been seen over 50 miles. They can cover their whole province, and keep their commander, in touch with units comprising a huge number of men. Lessons With Explosives We saw the explosives expert getting the men used to noise and. blast. He carried with him sticks of gelignite, made into what he called "Blast Offensive Grenades." A detonator and short fuse are thrust into the gelignite. The fuse is capped with their locallymade mixture for ignition. They strike it as a match is struck on a wooden match box, and it always strikes because it is waterproofed with shellac. The blast does not kill, except with a direct hit, but within a close range it shocks, and in the confusion that follows the Home Guard knows what to do. The expert was teaching the men who did not know already, how to make the famous "jam-tin" bomb. Actually, they used baking-powder tins, Ifto these they place a plug of geligite fused and capped as for the blast grenade. Packed in with the elignite is "shrapnel," which consists of any scraps of metal on which they can lay hands. They have found that the metal-punchings from fencing standards, etc., make excellent shrapnel. Old hails don’t come amiss, tacks, staples, and fragments. These weapons are really dangerous, but safe enough to use for a man who knows what he’s doing and keeps his head. The thrower, however, must be careful not to kill himself. He takes cover from his own weapon, for its killing power is very great. To throw these bombs as mortarbombs, the Home Guard is now ex-

péerimenting with its own mortars. The most successful: so far has been made from a metal tube large enough to take the jam-tin bomb on a rifle-gren-ade cup. At the base of the mortar tube is the locking: piece of a discarded shot-gun. The trigger and firing-pin of the shot-gun piece fire a blank shotgun cartridge, which throws the bomb up to 300 yards, Elevation controls range. A method of*traversing js not yet perfected. There is no ‘doubt that it soon will be perfected, some week-end, in somebody’s tool-shed, in somebody's backyard. Similar originality goes into the design of anti-tank weapons. They know all the tricks, and are expert from long practice in the use of the Molotov Cocktail. Some tar, or heavy oil, some petrol, kerosene, and a quart bottle. A cork and a piece of rag. Light it, throw it at the tank, follow it with half a dozen others. So! Experiments are being made with a better system of lighting the cocktail. A match-head mixture, a piece of tape with a striking paper on it, shellac for waterproofing, a tug, and there you have it. Their Own Bridges They collect and put together their own bridging material. One small unit bridged a 20-foot stream for us in almost 15 minutes. They had a few oil drums, soldered to be watertight, and a collection of boards and timber for bracing. When the bridge was built 200 men staged a rush across it, to fan out and attack on the other side. Whilethey crossed, the water around them was pelted with blast offensive grenades. One at least landed directly -beneath the running men. They ran on without faltering. They are used to it. Wearing home-made camouflage suits, some of them made themselves invisible in grass, ambushed a sentry, disposed of him, called up a raiding party, and successfully attacked an "enemy" detachment and destroyed their "ammunition dump." Similarly dressed, others ambushed a "tank." They stopped it with a charge of gelignite under its nose, and attacked it with Molotov Cocktails. In less than five seconds it was furiously

burning, and they put the imaginarycrew out of their misery with Tommy Guns. Wherever they made these mock attacks, they left behind them ingenious booby traps. Trip wires and various lures set off hidden charges of explosives. A favourite method was to set a rat trap so that when released, it came back and hit a rim-fire .22 cartridge. The powder from this set off a fuse, which ignited the charge. They blew up a road for us, and threw smoke bombs made on the spot. They supplied food and drink from their own canteen, made by themiselves, on a truck chassis mobile under its own power. They rescued imaginary casualties on home-made stretchers and cartied them off in their own ambulance, also’ home-made, also mobile under its own power. In one bivouac, they were looked after by the W.W.S.A., who were in many cases their own wives, or the wives of soldiers in the Middle East. We saw, for ourselves, that there was a@ weapon for every man, and that each day makes those weapons better’ and the men better able to use them. We saw for ourselves that women are working with the men. Women become camp cooks, nurses, despatch runners, or manufacturers of munitions in kit-chen-factories. 53 Napier Was Ready When we came to Napier, late one night, we could not see where it stood,

or where the houses lay on the bluff above the town. Not a light showed. The blackout was perfectly organised. The town was invisible a mile away. From the sea, Napier has become an empty coastline. And this without great inconvenience. The street lights still show the way, efficiently dimmed. In Napier. too, we found that ample provision had been made for air-raid shelters. We did not have time to see that the shelters were really effective, but we were told that most of the new buildings in the town had strong basements or cellars, and that these had been adapted for use during raids. All over the town we saw the notices: "Air Raid Shelter, No. 13, 270 Persons." Yes, one was numbered "13." Napier faces the facts. Perhaps we were over enthusiastic, because we saw them at their best. But we agreed we were right in believing that Hawke’s Bay had an army that could «hit hard. We had seen what people could do for themselves if they made the effort. We saw people working as free people. When they wanted something, or saw something that needed doing, it was not their custom to say "They ought to do. something about it," or "It’s time the Government did something." We had an impression that in Hawke’s Bay they had taken life and living firmly in their own hands, and would look, if aid were needed, first to themselves.