HOME DEFENCE

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 281, 22 August 1940, Page 11

HOME DEFENCE

Horses Wanted For Training

Mounted Troops

APPEAL TO FARMERS

Under the new territorial training scheme for home defence, the first move in the intensive training or existing horsed regiments was taken last week when the officers and n.c.o.’s of the Ist Battalion Queen Alexandra Mounted Rilles, the Ist Battalion Wel-lington-East Coast (Mounted Rifles, and the Ist Battalion Manawatu Mounted Rilles (motorized) began an intensive course at the Wanganui wing of the Central District School of Instruction preparatory to the calling up of the whole units on January 1. On Saturday week the officers and n.c.o.’s of the Queen Alexandra and East Coast units will move to the Central District School, Tauherenikau, to complete their course, and there they will have the use of a limited number of horses. In January, however, a large number of horses will be required, and Colonel H. B. Maunsell, 0.8. E., E.D., Officer Commanding the 2nd New Zealand Mounted Brigade, has expressed the hope that farmers will lend their horses to the army so that training will not be restricted in any way.

Colonel Maunsell said that a class of horse far better than those used for territoria l I raining in the past would be required, and he asked farmers Io help the army to obtain the mounts required by lending their horses. He had no doubt, he said, that sufficient horses of the right type were available in New Zealand. It was also pointed out by Colonel Maunsell that in New Zealand, where much of the terrain, particularly along the coast, would be impassable to armed forces dependent on motorized transport and tanks, great importance was attached by the military authorities to the training and equipment of mounted units for home defence.