HUMAN BULLET BOOT

Dozerdust, Volume 2, Issue 13, 26 March 1944, Page 4

HUMAN BULLET BOOT

LENARD WILLIAM BOOT, bettor known os the ” Human Bulldt ” is our Eng in eering Surveyor, ” Of the few thing* X can be sure/’ he said, one is that I was born in Christchurch 1?©B1 Asked why he was so sure/ he replied \ because I was there • His early childhood was quiet and placid; no evictions, murders, divorces, or bankruptcies* tin HE learnt ( barely ) to read and writ at the Addington School.' There were other things he learnt on the sly ( Buch as the first three verses of hie favourite song, the Wof J./ but he is very modest on the subject of hie so m what precocious childhood. After, leaving school he entered the lands & Survey Dept. Here he first displayed the characteristic that has marked his subsequent career : his developed gift of speed, ( He can walk from his tent to the showers in a quarter of and hour) ’From 1925 when he sped into the Lands & Survey the years raced by until by peaceful penetration ho landed in the Forestry Dept. ,Lands & Survey were left far behind. Hero ho remained ten years. ” Yes, ten long years passed and f didnft know. The buggers ”, he says, kept me inside when I was so keen to got out into tho open spaces. Why, my hobby a s tramp ing and deer stalking I I once vary nearly got into trouble when I went out to get on a dear ” However, trouble or no trouble, the ” Human Bullet” broke ih°the the P.W.D. in 1937 the * yeqr of th treat Boom”. The great- : est Dept, in the N.Z. public Service. ” And w© do a Public Service; making roads, bridges, hydro-electric schemes, huge buildings- and railways ( which the Railways Dept, kid they make). Only in Works Service H.Z.3 does he find the zest for Public Welfare exceeded. ” The way the GSM gets ma out into the parade in the mornings snows that he too is a highly spirited public thinking man, and if I’m going to make tho grade , I ’ll have to pull my ginger out. There are many other interesting gacts of my life, but I must go, I must - the ’ Old han ’ knows how I move and I dont want to let my reputation suffer ” And that reputation is summed up in ...” THE gong goes/ then simultaneously an impenetrable fog of dust issues from tent 5 H.Q,. lines. As the dust clear#, a statue like figure is seen at the head of ths Parade * that’s Lenard William Boot, ” Tho Human Bullet ” ( "rawing by 3/Bgt. Jim Craig )