CAVALRY SPIRIT LIVES ON

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 283, 24 August 1940, Page 4

CAVALRY SPIRIT LIVES ON

Mechanized “Troopers” HORSES REPLACED BY LIGHT TANKS (From The Officlyl War Correspondent Attached To The New Zealand Forces In Great Britain.) ALDERSHOT, August 24. Throughout military history the, cavalryman has been bound to his unit’ and his fellows by a special bond: their common love of their horses. In New Zealand the mounted rille volunteer or territorial is first a horseman, then a soldier; none the less a good soldier on that account; in some senses a better. One did sometimes wonder, however, what the trooper would see in the military life if ever he should be parted from his horse. Now they have been parted. There is little place iu modern warfare for mounted troops. To pit them against tanks or the dive bomber would be worse than the Light Brigade’s charge of the Russian guns at Crimea. Nevertheless, tli-ere remains great need for the qualities YVhieh made cavalry invaluable to British commanders in some of the famous campaigns of the past—mobility, surprise, speed, thrust in attack, concentrated hitting power for short periods. Thanks to “progress” the horse is no longer a military repository of those'qualities: a motor vehicle may be. So though the trooper has lost his horse, he remains mounted —over an internal combustion engine. In the New Zealand Expeditionary Force he»: continues to wear the familiar khaki and green puggaree, and, as a relic of his territorial connexion, be may have N.Z.AI.R. on his shoulder, but be wears neither spurs nor riding breeches. And if you were to confront him with' a post-and-raii fence or a water jump, he would simply give his tank a little extra throttle and barge right through. -For he is no longer mounted rifles; he is “Div. Cav.” (Divisional Cavalry). He rides tanks, or Bren gnn carriers, or motor-cycles, Yet he remains a trooper, and, with variations of number, his regiment retains its former organization into squadrons and troops. Ou the whole it is a happy compromise with necessity, in that it retains as much as possible of the old mounted rifle comradeship and esprit de corps on which to build the new loyalty—of man to machine, and, through that, to the mechanized unit. Old mounted men, with memories of the fighting in South Africa and Palestine, might be critical of the modern trooper, who possibly cannot even ride; but those who have seen him take six tons and a half of lumbering steel up a rough hillside, or drive it all night over the desert iu enemy territory, know him to be built of (lie same stuff as of old. The cavalry with the N.Z.E.F., like the infantry, included reinforcements, and their full utilization has necessitated a certain amount of improvisation. Some of the men are being trained as motor-cyclists, others as machine-gunners. Early Starts; Late Finishes. If you would go Yvith the Div. Cav. on one of our N.Z.E.F. field exercises, you must needs be prepared for early starts and late finishes; but you would have the satisfaction of knowing that you were out in front in attack and covering the rear in retreat. And you could not but be impressed by the enthusiasm, sound, sense and strict attention to the job shown by all ranks. One of the reasons for that is doubtless the relative smallness of the unit —when compared, for instance, with an infantry battalion. It is easier for every man to realize the importance of his own personal part in a show when all can be explained to him, sitting among the bracken in the sun, by his commanding officer. Another reason is that all the officers and most of the senior n.c.o.’s are from the mounted rilles regiments of the territorials. And a third, perhaps the most important of all, is that all of these men are on the sort of job they like. The horseman, though regretting tile parting from his horse, keeps at least his cavalry organization, much of bis former cavalry movements, and his regimental friendships. To the new type of trooper a motor engine means almost as much as a horse meant to his comrade. YVe were held up on the road when one of these, dispatch riding, whizzed past at 65 miles an hour. “That’s old So-and-so.” said our corporal. "Mart as they make them, but n wizard on a motor-bike. And you should see him strip an engine!” 'The madness, it seemed, most tolerantly condoned by his fellows, consisted in preferring a machine to a horse. Every branch of the army, these days, wants motor drivers and motot mechanics. The Div. Cav. want men with those qualifications and a little more—men who merge themselves with their machines, as a good horseman does with bis horse, so that almost the two become one, ami in a light corner can be relied on to uet in unison. There is a trooper here who before the war had made his mime on the broadsiding tracks of New Zealand ami Australia. Ami, appropriately, the t wo basic etdliusiasms of I lie unit, one man’s devotion to his horse ami another’s love of mechanical locomotion, are combined in the commanding oliicer, who was among the foremost motor-cyclists racing on the Christchurch beaches. Full-Scale Tactical Exercise. The Divisional Cavalry’s job on a “stunt” is chiefly one of reconnaissance and covering. Last weekend, when the moon was full and Hitler bragging about what he was going to do to Britain, our force went out on

its first full-scale tactical exercise. The cavalry vjent first, led by the tanks. The theory Yvas that au enemy had landed at several points in the south of England and advanced some miles inland. The New Zealand infantry brigades were ordered to occupy a defensive position across the line of advance, and the covering column was given the task of holding a forward ridge over against the enemy’s front line till the infantry were in position. In this case the Bren gun carriers bad a double job, that of protecting the rest of the covering column while it moved to position, and then assisting it to cover the infantry occupation. 1 Meanwhile the tanks had pushed out to the most forward position of all, where, cleverly hidden In the heart of patches of gorse, they swept with fire the whole of the open country in front of (lie enemy’s line. The sergeant in charge was a elerk back in New Zealand. To see him now one would think ho had never known an office more ■commodious or more comfortable than the cramped inside of a fighting machine. He revels in the job, a job the like of which had probably never crossed his mind when he walked into the recruitins oiiiee last spring. Others of the troop—add that they are not called “tankards”—are similarly keen. Stripes or no stripes, they are “Sandy” and “Hee.” and “Jimmy” to their fellows and to half the rest of the squadron: and to our English instructors they are just beyond believing. Months of painstaking tuition are considered necessary to make a man a tank driver. Our fellows were out on the roads in 10 days. They came clattering home, four crews of them, at 2 o’clock yesterday morning, after having driven hard, without lights, since half-past nine, their only halts those they must make regularly as part of maintenance training.' One coincided with an air-raid alarm. Even if they cannot sit a horse —and many of them can—these men will prove worthy of the finest traditions of the New Zealand Mounted Rifles. .Maintaining Vehicles. Coming off the hill in the evening, the infantry now securely in position, the Divisional Cavalry were last, and the tanks the last of them. In the field they are in constant touch with each other, and. with the commanding officer. Servicing and maintenance of vehicles is a vital part of routine duty. “What are you blokes doing today?” asked a casual visitor from the infantrv headquarters ahead. “Nothing." replied a cheerful voice from underneath a Bren carrier. "We're in rest billets!” We were, in fact, bivouacked comfortably, though somewhat moistly in the fern, and grimly checking over vehicles. Doubtless it didn’t seem much to a footslogger who had been digging the better part of the night, but it was one of the unseen preparations that helped to earn the boys a pat on the back from the G.O.C. for their part in next morning’s operations. The covering column was to move immediately after breakfast and occupy a new forward defensive position iu the path of a second presumed enemy force. Again the cavalry were in the van; aud when the farthest tank reported itself ill position, miles along the crest, before 10 o’clock, that was adjudged a smart performance. The tanks were out all night that night; the listening posts of our defence system on the watch, specially for parachutists. Next day, after an exchange of positions between the covering column and the improvised mixed brigadq—our friends the Maoris tvould have to bivouac that night in the sparse shelter of a windswept hilltop—there Yvas another cavalry action. The “infantillery,” entrenched against frontal attack, were unsupported on one flank. Accordingly the squadron was told off to protect that flank, which it did by establishing Bren gun posts to cover all approaches. All-Night Job. One carrier, its gun mounted ready for action, was held in reserve. This again was an all-night job, with the tanks on call in case they should be needed. That finished the fighting side of the exercise. In Lite forenoon, our fifth since leaving camp, the men looked again to their vehicles, then after lunch turned them over to skeleton crews so that the bulk of the squadron could share in the route march back to embussing point. Mustn’t let the infantrymen get the notion that he alone can march! Throughout the exercise motorcyclists were übiquitous and invaluable —running dispatches, maintaining touch with vehicles, patrolling routes aud directing the convoy. There is a message to go to headquarters, orders to withdraw to be communicated to such-and-such a troop, a heavy and bulky spare part for a tank to be collected from Ordnance three counties distant. Send a cyclist! He’ll got through; and he’ll get back again, without any waste time. Sergeant-Major Buys Smokes. It is only a scratchy impression, this, of what tiie div. Cav. does. Nothing about how it lives. Nor about its being the onlv unit to get paid in the field —au example that others will copy next time. Nothing about the sergeantmajor's going oil the hill and down into the village when the boys, ran out, of smokes and buying on their collective liehall' the entire stock of two pubs, and the only store. Nothing, either, of the major’s asking us whether xve would prefer stew or a dry tea half-way along the route of our route-march, of our all yelling “Stew”! of the quartermaster’s quietly efficient "0.K.,” and of its bcins stew, steaming hot and in apparently unrationed abundance, 10 minutes after we got there. Nothing of all these little things, which, typical of scores more, account for the splendid team spirit of the unit. Yet maybe enough to show that a mounted rifleman’s lot is not so bad after all, despite his having had to leave his horse grazing in a home paddock.