FUSION URGED

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 248, 1 August 1941, Page 3

FUSION URGED

AUSTRALIAN AND N.Z. FORCES. “BEST SHOCK TROOPS IN WORLD” (P.A.) AUCKLAND, July 31. The fusing of the New Zealand and Australian overseas forces into one command was strongly recommended by Mr James Aldridge, a war correspondent of the “New York Times,” whose repeated successes since the outbreak of war have "won him a high reputation in his field. . Mr Aldridge, who has also been writing for some Australian newspapers, is passing through Auckland with the intention of reaching Moscow to cover the war on the Russian front. “An Anzac force,” said Mr Aldridge, “could easily become the best shock troops in the world.” A combined force would give both the Australians and New Zealanders their maximum effectiveness. The New Zealand Division is too small as a single unit to make a really effective contribution toward beating the Germans, which the men are individually capable of making. If we do this, if we change the training methods and give them the equipment they must have, then hothing . in the world CduTa stop an Anzac force. But we have to realise that the Germans have methods which oittdate ours.

“We have regarded the bayonet,” said Mr Aldridge, “as the focal point around which an infantryman’s training must be concentrated. The use of the bayonet by our training methods is the peak of a soldier’s fighting purpose. All his training centres on the assumption that when he fights he uses his rifle and bayonet. I should say in this war that about 1 per cent use the bayonet. I have not yet spoken to a man who could tell me that he has used his bayonet on an enemy or fired a bullet at a given individual enemy target.”

From his experience in the present war, said Mr Aldridge, he would say that the present training methods bred a completely wrong and, for a soldier, a dangerous psychology. He had seen men whose faith in the effectiveness of their weapons, a rifle and bayonet, was never fulfilled because they were combating a type of warfare which to a large extent nullified their use.

/ “The Australians have possibly outshone the New Zealanders because of the publicity which they have been given,” said Mr Aldridge. “If you get down to hard facts I would say that the New Zealanders were equally if not more in the fray in the last eight or nine months. One of the things which we need in our fights against the Germans is a picked body of mountain troops, and I would say that the New Zealanders impressed me as being excellent material for this type of force, that is, if they have to he kept as a single unit.”