THREE CHEERS FROM THE GUARDS

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30608, 26 November 1964, Page 16

THREE CHEERS FROM THE GUARDS

(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.)

LONDON, November 25.

All the Welsh and Irish Guards at the Chelsea Barracks, from the cooks to the senior officers, turned out to see off the New Zealand Army contingent yesterday morning.

The New Zealanders left in four buses for Larkhill en route to Lyneham airfield, in Wiltshire. As each bus moved away a regimental sergeantmajor called out: “Three cheers for the Kiwis.” Caps were waved, and the barracks echoed. “It was most moving,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Frank Rennie, deputy chief New Zealand liaison officer in London. “Somehow or other you don’t expect displays of emotion from the Guards.” The Guards would like to see the New Zealanders back again. But before then some of them are hoping privately that there might be a “reciprocal”* visit to New Zealand.

Major H. S. Cocks, the contingent’s commanding officer, stayed on briefly in London for an hour or two “fixing I bills.”

“It has been a wonderful experience,” he said. “Tiring —but wonderful.” New Zealand is “a small country with a large experience of providing first-class troops,” an editorial in “The Times” said today. The editorial said the words “they stood by us in two world wars” were “a hackneyed appeal, debased by political usage, part of the clap-trap of the platform.” It added: “But the fact behind the sentiment is still very real for those who remember the New Zealand expeditionary force and their superb divisional commander, General Freyberg. “They were tough, disciplined, and cheerful, and less belligerent out of battle, less well known to the military police, than others that need not be mentioned.”