Adequate Communication Gear For Army By 1968

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31086, 15 June 1966, Page 16

Adequate Communication Gear For Army By 1968

The Army’s field force would be adequately equipped with communications equipment by 1968. said the director of the Royal New Zealand Signal Corps (Lieutenant-Col-onel S. W. Brackenburry) in Christchurch yesterday. Colonel Brackenburry said new communications equipment ordered would cater for all possible techniques until 1970 when new equipment would be produced. He said he was particularly pleased that communications equipment procurement was going so well. Colonel Brackenburry, an Englishman, was appointed director a month ago. He is on his first visit to the South Island to familiarise himself with communications commitments in the Southern Military District.

Because of the role of the field force in South-east Asia, the Army tended to use American communciations equipment. Because of the aim of standardisation this was perfectly satisfactory, he said. Before coming to New Zea-

land as the fourth director of signals from Britain, Colonel Brackenburry was deputy president of the British Army’s Regular Commissions Board. “Our main purpose was to select candidates for all forms of commission in the Army. We selected cadets to go to Sandhurst, for special commissions, university, and short-service commissions,” he said. There was no shortage of young men seeking to enter the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst The greatest shortage was of suitable officers for short-service commissions. Colonel Brackenburry has served in the desert with Lord Wavell’s 13th Corps, with the British Expeditionary Force in Belgium, in Palestine during the emergency, with the 16th Parachute Brigade in Germany, as gunners signal officer with the Commonwealth Division in Korea, as a N.A.T.O. staff officer in Norway, and with the Brigade of Ghurkas in Malaysia.