MOUNTED RIFLES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 176, 26 July 1940, Page 5

MOUNTED RIFLES.

HOME DEFENCE.

HORSEMEN STILL USEFUL.

USE IN MAORI WARS.

(By J. 0!.)

There is muck general approval among country men of the decision of Cabinet to re-establish Mounted Rifles units in various districts, from the north of Auckland to Otago. Mechanised bodies of troops can never supersede altogether the horseman, who can operate in country too rough for wheels, and where mobility of troops is an essential. There are to 'be nine squadrons, the strength of which is notj yet announced; these will 'be divided into troops, presumably of about 100 men each. The age limit is sufficiently liberal, from 25 years to 55 years.

The horse and the horsemen will thus come into their own again, at a time when modern military methods seemed to 'be about to pass over the mounted man as a fighter of the past. Machinery cannot do everything. There is a certain limit in our 'backblocks, where the horse is the only means, in many places, of making a journey across countrv.

Before our mounted rifles units in New Zealand there was the light • cavalry organisation, which first came into existence about 1860. The Colonial ■ Defence Corps was a highly-useful 'body in country patrol and in the Maori Wars of 1803 onward in various districts from Wellington and Hawke's Bay to Taranaki and Auckland. The Auckland Squadrons under Colonel Nixon served throughout the Waikato War; their srallant commander was fatally wounded at Rangiowahia in 1864. After the various campaigns there was still need for cavalry along the Waikato frontier and other borderlands in the heart of the island, and so the Waikato i Cavalry and similar corps came into , being. Farmers and their sons made up

these highly-successful bodies of eettlersoldiere, commanded by euch notable officers as Major Jackson, of the Waikato Squadron, and Caiptain John Bryce, Kai-iwi, Weet Coast.

These corps gradually were replaced by the Mounted organisations which discarded the sword and used the horse mostly for transportation only. The fighting for which the M.R. were trained was chiefly action on foot. In a Waikato wartime M.S. diary I discovered the first mention of mounted rifles as distinct from cavalry. In the early part of 1864, two officers discussed mounted arms suitable for the Waikato flighting; they were Colonel Henry ETaveloek, on General Cameron's staff, ind Major Von Tempsky, of the Forest Rangers, when on a night march from re Awamutu camp to attack Kihikihi. 'rlavelock (son of Sir Henry Havelock >f Indian mutiny fame) advocated the lorse a means of transit for riflenen, the fighting to be done on foot >nly.