N.Z. troops took to skis near famous cedars

Press, 24 September 1988, Page 26

N.Z. troops took to skis near famous cedars

TIM DUNBAR writes about one of the perhaps lesser known W.W. II training schools

They were in a nice hotel high up in the mountains ... the setting was picture postcard stuff with snow-laden cedars ... the food was good and plentiful and the ski-ing wonderful. They were New Zealanders having a lot of fun, but their purpose was deadly serious. It was wartime, 1942, and they were in the Ninth Army Ski School as ski troops training for mountain warfare.

Requisitioned as headquarters for the school was the Cedars of Lebanon Hotel, along with a barracks used earlier by detachments of French Chasseurs Alpins, altitude 6300 ft (1920 metres) in the mountains of Lebanon.

Beside the hotel were about 250 ancient trees, the largest remaining grove of the famous Cedars of Lebanon which Solomon used to build his temple in Jerusalem.

Although thousands of Allied soldiers were eventually trained to be high-altitude ski troops, the ski school is still a largely unknown wartime activity. Certainly that must be true of the New Zealand troops who comprised the last three courses of the 1942 winter. There were only about 350 of them, something like 120 on each course.

One of the assistant instructors (for the last course only) was the well-known Mount Cook guide, Mick Bowie, then a sergeantmajor. Overstating things a little, Bowie said later: “Someone in England dreamed up a lovely idea for a holiday in the middle, of the war.” ("Mick Bowie, The Hermitage Years,” by Nan Bowie). John Rolleston, who still runs a law practice in Timaru, agrees that the ski school was great fun, but adds that the training was the hardest physical work he did in the Army. The New Zealand officers and men picked for the courses, lasting only three weeks each, much appreciated their good fortune, although few people had skied in those days. There was apparently no jealousy among other troops. “We’re the world’s luckiest chaps. Too good to be true,” wrote Corporal R. F. (Bob) Fear,

also of Timaru, in his wartime diary on March 15, 1942, the day after the Kiwis arrived up at the Cedars for the first course.

Only a fortnight before the New Zealand soldiers had been in the midst of sand and flies in the desert. Now they were in the snow just a short time after the Division had shifted from Egypt to Syria. Among the selected officers, incidentally, was the Christchurch middle-distance runner, Lieutenant Pat Boot, winner of Empire Games gold medal in the 880 yards event at Sydney in 1938. Bob Fear, now a semi-retired farmer in Swannanoa, says that the Army had called for people with ski-ing experience. “At a rough guess at least one-third had never skied in their lives, but probably said they had as it

sounded pretty good. There were more applicants than positions by quite a way. But I was lucky, I knew my officer well and said I was going.” His own ski-ing experience had mainly consisted of trips to Burke’s Pass and the Ball Hutt on Mount Cook, “playing around a couple of times a year.” While they ended up in a seven-storey hotel, the New Zealanders did not know that at the time. “We might have been going to a tent camp or anything,” says Bob Fear. "All we knew it was ski troops and I thought that sounds all right to me, to combine ski-ing with the war.”

The Cedars of Lebanon Hotel (“Les Cedres”) lacked somewhat in furnishings and was hardly soft and luxurious, but they found it very comfortable. “Com-

pared with Army Nissen huts in Syria sleeping 25 to 30 men it was a palace,” Mr Fear says. He and one other man had a room to themselves with steam heater, handbasin and mirror.

One of the best things about the courses was the food. The New Zealand ski troopers were on “Aussie rations,” nearly double their own and a welcome change from goat meat. Among the items on the menu were butter, soup, tinned potatoes, “oceans of bread,” bacon, gravy, extra eggs and dates. There was the rare choice of having tea without milk and for those accustomed to roughing it tables and forms were a luxury. John Rolleston, a captain in an infantry company, had done more ski-ing than most of his fellow soldiers. When a university student, he had skied a lot at Mount Ruapehu in his September vacations. His experience was recognised at the end of the first course by the chief instructor of the ski school, Major Jimmy Riddell, of the 1936 British Olympic ski team. “He asked why didn’t I stay on as an assistant instructor and I thought it was an excellent idea.” So Captain Rolleston got to stay on at the Cedars for the second and third courses, through almost until the end of May, 1942, as the snow retreated further and further up the mountain. While the training was considerably tougher than any other courses he did during the war including three months at an N.C.O. school, the Timaru man emphasised that the whole thing was a “total holiday from the Army.” “We’d have company parades, then slope skis and march off to the nearest snow. There was military discipline but we had such great chaps in charge as Major Riddell and the commandant, Captain Eric Thompson, of the Yorkshire Hussars, that it was great fun,” says John Rolleston. He marvelled at his good fortune in being on snow almost the whole time the New Zealand Division was in Syria, ski-ing while others were occupied digging holes down in the Bekaa Valley and in the north of Syria. Because the courses had to be limited to three weeks the New Zealanders never bivouacked out and there was little time for manoeuvres on skis. We were just taught basic ski-ing and how to get about on ski,” Mr Rolleston says. In his book, “Dog in the Snow,” Major Riddell made special mention of the toughness of the Australian and New Zealand intakes of that first year. “On only their third day out on skis (actually their second, Mr Rolleston said) I was able to lead a group of over 100 New Zealand

beginners on an undulating 10mile cross-country trek ... the trip took all day and there was a very wide range of slope, snow condition and natural obstacles (including a strong wind with sleet and snow) — they were very tired. But not one man fell out,” wrote Major Riddell. Bob Fear says that the New Zealand ski troops were in tremendous physical shape. “Everyone said that the fittest they were in their Army career was after being in Syria — and the ones in the ski school were just that fitter still.” He damaged the inside of his knee, normally a major injury, but because of his fitness was back on skis in four days. No New Zealander on those courses would forget that most of the time they were on skis there was the encumbrance of a pack and rifle as well. Their presence helped the learning process. “After a couple of cracks over the head with the rifle you got it pretty quickly, I think,” Bob Fear said. “You did get used to it (the rifle) to a degree; you had to. The pack wasn’t so bad, you could fall on that.” The climax of each course was the advanced training test, in later years not attempted until the fifth to seventh week.

Best times for some on posteriors

Students had to make a steep 3000 ft climb with rifle, ammunition and 251 b (11.4 kg pack in less than three hours. At the summit they had two minutes to fire five shots at a foot square target on a 100-yard (91.44 m range. Four shots had to be hits. Then, without rest, they had to get downhill again, by one means or another, within 20min and fire another five shots at the bottom. The required times were adjusted in difficult conditions. As an assistant instructor John Rolleston was later in the enviable position of being able to stand on the col with the Major and watch the students struggle up“You had to climb on skis, you couldn’t carry them,” Mr Rolleston says. “They didn’t have edges, just round, soft wood. Climbing on them was pretty difficult.” Bob Fear actually got to do the advanced training test twice: first a dry run when the chief instructor and his party got lost in fog and ended up at the wrong col; then the real thing in very icy conditions two days later. “I got up in 214 hours and slipped and slid down in 32min,” reads Corporal Fear’s diary of April 5, 1942. He recalls now that the whole

of the mountainside was a sheet of ice and fairly steep as well. He was struggling to traverse and do kick turns. Ironically, some of the less competent skiers got the best times by sliding down on their posteriors, some wearing out the seat of their trousers in the process. Like most of the other candidates Bob Fear failed the test, missing on the shooting both at the top and the bottom. In the hurry to beat the clock, students did not allow enough time to adjust the heartbeat. Only 10 passed. As well as the many hours of ski training, time spent pulling sledges and doing guard and cookhouse duties, the students on the courses received numerous lectures. One about “recce, patrols” in the snow was particularly interesting, according to Mr Fear. In a humorous aside, Major Riddell referred to a Swiss fellow previously in ski troops, who claimed he could tell a person’s nationality by the colour of his urine in the snow. Then or since there has not been much publicity about the Middle East ski school, although “The Weekly News” of July 15, 1942, did publish four pictures of the Kiwi ski troops, including one showing Bob Fear in a group of “husky New Zealanders stripped to the waist during training.” According to John Rolleston, the ski school did not get a very high profile. “It was early 1942 and a lot of war to go still.” Even now he finds it hard to believe that mountains in the Lebanon really went up to 10,000 ft — only 15 miles (25.14 km from the Mediterranean coast. Moving up there in the first place was quite a change with the mountain cold and some blizzards, one of which marooned the school from the outside world for a week. That winter brought the heaviest snow, in Syria and the Lebanon for 30

years; around Christmas soon after the Australians arrived at the Cedars there had been a snow storm lasting 16 days. “When we got back to the desert it was right in the summer heat,” Mr Rolleston says. “It was a very marked contrast, three weeks from off the snow. Rommel had attacked in the desert and when the Gazala battle started to go badly wrong for the British the New Zealand Division was hastily recalled to the desert.” The New Zealand Division trucked 3000 kilometres from Syria to the Western Desert in about thee days and became involved in a defensive action against Rommel’s forces when New Zealand brigade groups and one rifle company from an Essex regiment were surrounded at Minqar Qaim. This was followed by the New Zealanders’ historic night attack and withdrawal to the Eighth Army line at El Alamein. A year later, in the beginning of 1943, when things were more

settled and he got leave, Captain Rolleston made his own way back to the Cedars and found some “pretty rough accommodation,” but was then invited back to the school again for a fortnight by Major Riddell. He was given a company of Greeks to train and had a lot of fun trying to teach them to ski. John Rolleston kept on ski-ing right until 1980 when he had both hips replaced and decided not to risk any damage. “I’d had almost 50 years of ski-ing and thought that was about enough. I felt I shouldn’t be greedy.” Bob Fear still has some solid reminders of the Cedars of Lebanon — a tobacco box and an ash tray for winning the ski school’s langlauf (cross-country) race and finishing second in the combined downhill and langlauf. Both are made from the prized cedar wood. Footnote: Since World War II the Cedars of Lebanon Hotel, 126 km inland from Beirut, has been developed as a fully mechanised ski resort.