THE A.C. FORCE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 110, 11 May 1936, Page 6

THE A.C. FORCE.

i NEW ZEALAND FRONTIERSMEN i > BUSH FIGHTERS AND ROAD MAKERS. (By J.C.) There cannot be many survivors oF the original Armed Constabulary Field I orce, which formed for many years New Zealand's little standing army. An association of old comrades of the Permanent Force, the lineal descendant of the N.Z.A.C., has lately been formed in Wellington, and two or three of its members are veterans of the Constabulary, but their service does not extend back to the founding of the corps. There are more in Auckland and Taranaki, where inquiry will no doubt bring forward a number wif.li Maoii War service, although 05 years have passed since the last shots were fired. There will be Maoris among them, for the Government conducted the final expeditions chiefly with native contingents, and among these were members of the Arawa and other tribes enlisted as Constabulary. But active service conditions existed for some years after the last expeditions against To Kooti, and stockades, blockhouses and redoubts along the various prortiers were garrisoned up to the early 'eighties; in fact the last redoubt in a native district —the A.C. post at Kawhia—was built in 1883. It was not until 1884-85 that the Armed Constabulary were finally demobilised as a corps, and tlie members were drafted into the garrisons for the harbour forts then under construction and into the police force. Irish Constabulary as Model. It was in 18(17-08 that the New Zealand Armed Constabulary was organised for service against the Maoris in Taranaki and on the East Coast, under a Government scheme which paradoxically sought to demilitarise the field forces. The Government took the Royal Irish Constabulary as its model, and the force was placed under Mr. St. John Branigan as commissioner. The veterans of the various companies of Bangers and Rifles and military settlers found themselves under a system of control which seemed better fitted to a civilian police than a body of troops. However, the system made for unity of control, and the men of the A.C. fought just as well under a command which called them constables instead of soldiers, and which styled a company a division. But some of the ex-Imperial officers | in the corps did not take kindly to the semicivilian organisation of the fighting force. About 1870 a certain captain—or sub-inspector —was called to account by Mr. Branigan because he had circulated among his brother officers some pen-and-ink sketches showing himself as he had been and presently would be —first a dashing young British officer, then a shawl-ki]ted Ranger on the inarch, and lastly a "Bobby" with a baton. This was considered bv headquarters to be an attempt to ridicule the force. However, the captain, who was by the way of being the wit of the force, explained it all in his persuasive Irish way and emerged from' headquarters absolved of all blame and commended as a very zealous and intelligent officer.

, Hard Fighting. The new A.C. Force saw a great deal of hard fighting on the west coast and elsewhere in IS6S-G9. It came to grief in the Taranaki , bush in the early part of the campaign against Titokowaru, because it and its companion corps consisted largely of raw recruits. But early , in 1869, after a period of hard drilling under experienced officers, it gradually won the day all along the line; and a little later in the Urewera Country it proved superior to the Maoris in a very wild and almost unknown mountain land. Colonel Whitmore wrote of his men that six months of continuous campaigning had made them a first-rate fighting corps, better than their opponents in every way except that they could not run as fast. There was more of the soldier than the constable about the A.C.'s at that period. Several of the "soldier-policemen" won the New Zealand Cross for distinguished valour in action. Then in the period when peace had been restored but when the various frontiers were still guarded by the A.C. in their earthworks and their stockades, the force entered another field of usefulness. Sir Donald Maclean, the Minister of Defence and Native Affairs, remembering the lesson of the military road through the Highlands of his native land, set j the force to work road-making into the interior. He believed that the pick and shovel were as necessary as the rifle in assuring j peace, by opening up the country for military movements and for the furtherance of settlement. So everywhere on the frontier roadmaking parties were presently at work, and many of the Upper Waikato and West and East Coast roads then laid out and formed by constabulary labour are now the main highways. One is the road from Tauranga to Rotorua, Atiamuri and Taupo; others are the C'ambridge-Rotorua road and the road across the plains and ranges from Taupo to Napier. Road-making. So the soldier-policemen became navvies. The extra pay' for this field work did not prevent some grumbling, and the Defence Minister deemed it necessary to issue a memorandum to officers commanding explaining the necessity for the strategic road-making and enjoining upon all members of the force cheerful and loyal obedience to the new dispensation in frontier control. There are on record, following upon this, reports from numerous officers reporting the excellent progress of their roading duties and the good and willing work done by the various parties.

So, well into the 'eighties, the bell tents of the Constabulary camps and the greyshirted, whiskered campaigners who laid down the Snider for the pick and spade and shovel were a familiar sight on the outskirts of settlement. The Government road-making served the needs of travellers and settlers in far-out parts of the Waikato and Taranaki and Bay of Plenty and other districts at a time when it was badly needed, and it was not the least of the national duties faithfully discharged for which the old Field Force should be remembered.