Rifle Brigade Assn’s last reunion

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33066, 6 November 1972, Page 18

Rifle Brigade Assn’s last reunion

The New Zealand Rifle Brigade Association has held its last national reunion. The now elderly survivors of the brigade met in ( Christchuch at the week-end for a last national get-together—three days of oldsoldier comradeship.

The association will now formally go into recess, but contact between the soldiers of the brigade will probably continue on a local scale. The “Dinks," as members of New Zealand Rifle Brigade became known, won distinction in the First World War for their military achievements and gallantry. The brigade saw action in Egypt —during the Senussi rebellion at the end of 1915—and from 1916 to 1918 served on the Western Front. One of its best-known achievements was the taking of the fortress of Le Quesnoy in the last week of the war. by scaling the walls on ladders. Saturday (November 4) was the fifty-fourth anniversary of the taking of Le Quesnoy. FORMAL DINNER The reunion began on Friday with an informal social function. On Saturday evening, the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) —whose father, the late Mr J. H. Muldoon, was a member of the brigade — and the French Ambassador to New Zealand (Mr Christian de Nicolay) ipaid tribute to the brigade at a formal dinner. Mr Muldoon, proposing a toast to the New Zealand Rifle Brigade, said that it stood out as one of the great regiments which saw the overnight transformation of civilian into soldier, becoming in the process a unit alongside which any soldier, amateur or professional, would be proud to serve. “The whole history of the New Zealand Rifle Brigade took place within a period of less than four years, between May, 1915, and February, 1919,” Mr Muldoon said. “Yet | in that short time, the New Zealand Rifle Brigade made | for itself a place in the his-

tory of our nation which will be indelibly inscribed on the pages of the story of New Zealand.

“The individual decorations for valour, the roll of honour of those who did not return, are all matters of record,” Mr Muldoon said.

In reply to a toast to France, proposed by the chairman of the Canterbury branch of the New Zealand Rifle Brigade Association (Dr L. C. L. Averill), Mr de Nicolay praised the brigade for its achievement in taking Le Quesnoy with little damage. While artillery fire would have been more likely to drive the enemy out, the brigade had preferred to take Le Quesnoy by hand-to-hand fighting to avoid damage to civilian property, he said. He expressed the gratitude of the people of France for the brigrade’s role in France. OTHER GUESTS Other guests who attended the dinner included the Minister of Broadcasting and Tourism (Mr Walker), Mr C. H. Upham, V.C. and bar, the commanding officer of the 2nd Battalion Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment (Lieutenant-Colonel E. H. Poole), the press attache at the French Embassy (Mr F. Gaussen), and the president of the Christchurch Returned Services* Association (Mr J. Green). A service was conducted by the Bishop of Christchurch (the Rt Rev. W. A. Pyatt) in the Christchurch Cathedral yesterday morning, after which a wreath was laid at the Citizens’ War Memorial, in a short ceremony. In the afternoon, members of the association heard the band of the 2nd Battalion Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment play at Mona Vale.