SPEEDY ARMY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 83, 8 April 1940, Page 3

SPEEDY ARMY.

COMPARISON WITH 1914-18. HORSES ELIMINATED. (From Our Own Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, Sunday. The speed with which the present division of the Second Xew Zealand Expeditionary Force now in nucleus in Egypt and being recruited in Xew Zealand would be able to move in action was compared with that of the division of the X.Z.E.F. in the Great War byColonel R. A. Row, D.5.0., officer commanding the Central Military District, at a social gathering given by the Wellington branch of the Xew Zealand Scottish Regimental Association. The man-power of the Great War division was approximately 20,000; today it was between 12,000 and 13,000, said Colonel Row. The horse-power was. 4000; to-day there were no horses. The firing power to-day was four times that of the Great War, because of the increase in- the number of machine guns and artillery to a division. The presentday division would be able to show a clean pair of heels without the aid of running shoes; it could move rapidly in two or three hours over a distance that in 1914-18 would have occupied a like number of days. Guns were moved forward by horses in the Great War; today there were ten Bren gun carriers to a battalion and no horses were needed. When a Great War division moved forward it was protected by men »u horses moving ahead; to-day tanks did this job. For communications, wireless and radio telephony had replaced mounted orderlies and visual signals. The army of to-day wa«, one of specialists in which every trade and profession had a place.