Two Hours in Trentham

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 210, 2 July 1943, Page 8

Two Hours in Trentham

Written for "The Listener"

by

DUG-OUT

HAD not been in Trentham for three years, and before that for 23 years. So I found changes. But I was less struck by the things that had changed than by those that had not. It was not so much that the more some things change the more they remain the same. That has applied to all things military since the beginning of history. What struck me was the fact that, although I have always regarded Trentham as an unfinished camp-raw, cold, scrambling, impermanent, like a bush or goldfields town -it seemed, that day, very old;as in fact it is for New Zealand; but as old, I really mean, as settlement itself, which, of course, it isn’t. It is curious, too, how soon we have accustomed ourselves to battledress, in all ranks, and how rapidly military stiffness has disappeared with it. Trentham on parade 25 years ago, and Trentham off parade, was a very uneasy place. To-day there is nothing to embarrass anybody. The recruit may lose his way, but he is very raw and very sensitive if anybody robs him of his self-respect. Even when the General arrived-it was a marching-out ceremony-there was no shouting, no sudden ground-roll of warning, no dramatic freezing of figures and faces as if the Last Trump had sounded. Nor when the ceremony was over was there anything like that unlovely spectacle of a generation ago-the great man stiffly taking a cup of tea while a dozen or more staff and senior officers stood round in awed and goofish silence (when they were not filling the air with "Sirs!"). Danger As Well As Virtue I am still not sure about these ceremonial drills. If there is virtue in turning or halting by numbers, in lifting the knee to waist level in marking time, in using rifles not’ to shoot with but to drill with, until the soldier himself is a mechanism rather than a brain, there is also grave danger, and I am not certain that we can afford the risk. I never see an armed sentry on duty without feeling how unfair it is to expose him to danger before we have liberated him from his inhibitions — so many paces this way, so many the other way, so many for the turn, so many distinct movements to bring his rifle down, and so on. I am not foolish enough to suppose that a sentry in danger would, in fact, do all these things, but I have had enough experience to know that he would be safer if he had never been shown how to do them. After all, drill works both ways. I agree that it holds men at their posts when, without it, some of them would run. But it can also hold them rigid when they should run-not necessarily backwards. It can give the individual the courage of the ‘whole company, or regiment, or division; but it can also give him the paralysis of the whole company — rob him of his own inner voice and hold him helpless waiting for someone else’s, ‘ °

My point is this: to show that men are fit to command, we put them through parade-ground drill designed to rob them of every impulse but instant obedience. At this particular inspection all the candidates had been officers before. They had marched past before, not carrying rifles, but leading platoons or companies. So when the solemn moment came the other day, and these men, now in the ranks, got the order "Eyes Right!" at least one of them brought his right hand in a flash to the salute. In other words, once an automaton always an automaton — except after a great struggle. Why mechanise men at all? The only answer I know. that comes near satisfying me was given by Robert Graves in Good-bye to All That: "We all agreed on the value of armsdrill, as a factor in morale. ‘Arms-drill as it should be done’ someone said, ‘is beautiful, especially when the company feels itself as a single being, and each movement is not a movement of every man together, but a single movement of one large creature,’ I used to have big bunches of Canadians to drill-four and five hundred at a _ time. Spokesmen came forward once and asked what sense there was in sloping and ordering arms and fixing a unfixing bayonets. They said they had co to France to fight and not to guard Buckingham Palace. I told them that in every division of the four in which I had served, there had been three different kinds of troops. Those that had guts but were no good at drill; those that were good at drill but had no guts; and_ those who had guts and were good at drill. These last fellows were, for some reason or other, much the best men in a show. I didn’t know why and I didn’t care. I told them that when they were better at fighting than the Guards’ Division, they could perhaps afford to neglect their arms-drill." It is not a complete answer, but coming from such a man in such a place, it has to be taken seriously. The Real Question — However, the real question of the day came, not during my first hour, but during my second. It was this: why do our high-ranking officers speak better, in three cases out of four, than their corresponding numbers in politics and business? General Puttick is not an orator. If he were, he might not think (Continued on next page)

(Continued from previous page) it proper to indulge the gift. But he can stand up on a platform with a few notes and speak for an hour without repeating himself, without being tedious, without saying anything foolish or extravagant, without finding it necessary to be slangy or tough, without failing to find the words he wants, without tubthumping, without cheapening himself, and without once playing down to his audience or insulting it with bluff. I don’t know anyone outside the army who does it better, and only one or two who do it so well. I leave it to others to decide what this means. My own guess is perhaps too simple-that there is more integrity in the army than in business or in politics, and more manliness than in academic circles.