"SLUR RESENTED"

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 173, 24 July 1941, Page 4

"SLUR RESENTED"

N.Z. MARKSMANSHIP

MINISTER IN DEFENCE

(By Telegraph.—Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, this dav. The marksmanship of the NewZealand troops in Greece and Crete was strongly defended by the Minister of National Service, Mr. Semple, speaking in the financial debate in the House of Representatives last evening. Mr. Semple referred to an address made by the member for Tauranga Mr. Doidge, and said that the latter had quoted an unknown soldier as saying that New Zealand troops could not shoot in Greece and Crete. He did not think Mr. Doidge had intended to cast a slur, but unconsciously he had cast a slur on the men who had trained the Dominion troops.

Mr. Semple recalled that the First Echelon was in Egypt months before it was moved into* the danger zone, and during that time the men were training intensively night and day. He knew men who had been through the tragedy of Greece and Crete, men who were not complaining, but were saying that they hoped to God to get even with the Germans some day "Give us equal equipment and we will fix the Huns," they said. Brigadier Hargest Praised Mr. Semple went on to say that the Second Echelon was in England for nine months, and what were they doing there? He disagreed with Brigadier Hargest's politics, but took off his hat to him as a soldier. Ho was one of the gamest men who had ever lived in New Zealand. Would he have allowed his men to sit in England and do nothing? On many occasions, added Mr. Semple, he had visited the camps in New Zealand and had watched the men shooting, and had never seen better shooting among men who had just come in The honourable gentleman had made an indictment against the men who took charge of those boys' lives. Was it a fair thing to tell mothers that their boys had been slaughtered because they could not shoot?

Mr. Doidge: Who told them that? That's a wicked assertion.

The Minister then quoted from a broadcast by Mr. Geoffrey Cox from the Middle East. He said that Mr. Cox, a Rhodes scholar, a war correspondent in Europe and a soldier in Greece and Crete, had stated: "It is a fact I know personally, that against the Germans in a straight-out scrap with equal weapons we have got it on them every time. We have been taught to shoot more accurately than they have."

Next, Mr. Semple read from a report from the Middle East headquarters. That report, he said, referred to the remarkable rifle shooting of the New Zealand troops. One report, referring to May 20 on Crete, would settle the charge of bad marksmanship for all time. It said that 136 parachute troops landed against one New Zealand company. Of the Germans 134 were shot in one minute and the other two were wounded. The prisoners had asked if all the New Zealand troops were picked snipers. If that was not crack shooting he did not know what was.