FORTRESS TROOPS.
Sir,-When The Listener next publishes an article on our Fortress Troops, it is to be hoped that you may describe their life as they know it, and not as their officers or your public would have it. These eulogies of a glorious if comfortless adventure may excite the fervour of patriotic civilians; but the extolled Territorial reads only mock heroic.
Take such platitudes as: "The troops are stuck into a real job — neither easy nor comfortable — but they are doing it well." The New Zealand Territorial in a forward area leads a life that is easy judged by the amount of energy expended, and as comfortable as good food, warm clothing, and reasonably clean quarters can make it. There is little strenuous exercise, now that the first frantic period of preparations is over. The Territorial is due for praise of a different kind. The very idea that he is "stuck into a real job" is to him irony itself. For a permanent sentry’s job is no job. Many hours by night and day he spends watching the sea, restless and unhappy, almost wishing for the enemy to attack, so that he might escape from his enforced inertia. That he is indeed never off duty, and may be called out at any minute in twenty four hours, is no consolation. Life lacks interest, he grows nervous and fretful. He will envy his comrade the transportdriver the transitory thrill of " giving her the gas." He will long for
the occasional chance of a "live practice": anything to rend the dreadful net of monotony that closes upon him. It is difficult to be conscientiously idle, and the sentry’s only legitimate hope is his few hours’ leave per week. In that time he can try frantically to .illuminate the void. But let him not forget that disillusionment will follow. This is the pathetic story of the men who guard our coasts. Glory is not theirs, search for it as we may. Their life is dull, their minds atrophy. That is their sacrifice. The war of nerves is hitting them
hard:
F.F.
E.
(Lower Hutt).
(We are glad to present another side of this picture. But which is more platitudinous: to say that our fortress troops have a disagreeable ‘job but are doing it-which is true of 90 per cent. of them-or to say that their minds atrophy gazing at the sad sea waves-which is not true even of the cay 10 per cent. as our correspondent’s letter shows?-~
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 151, 15 May 1942, Page 4
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416FORTRESS TROOPS. New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 151, 15 May 1942, Page 4
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