RECRUITING NOVELTY

Greymouth Evening Star, 30 December 1940, Page 8

RECRUITING NOVELTY

A MODERN TREK. A motorised column, known as the “Commando on Wheels,” is on tour in the Union of South Africa, the object being to give the people an opportunity of seeing the tremendous progress made’in building up the union’s army. The column, representative of all the units that to-day comprise the new South African Army, is accompanied by a flight of aeroplanes which are demonstrating at various centres. “People in country districts,” said the Prime Minister, General Smuts, “will for the first time be able to see for themselves something of what we. have done. Aireddy thousands of our countrymen are in Northern Africa; hundreds more are going there, armed and equipped as you will see,. soldiers of the mobile, column, if the column is a revela- I tion and an inspiration to South! Africa, it also carries an appeal. It is an appeal to all South Africans to make our Army and our war effort even stronger than it already is. We are strong, but we must be stronger still.”

The “Commando on Wheels” was given an i enthusiastic send-off by a large crowd when it left Roberts Heights on November 1. Before the three-mile-long mobile column moved off, Mrs'J. C; Smuts, wife of the Prime Minister, presented an illuminated scroll to the deputy-adjutant-general, Colonel G. C. G. Werdmuller, who arranged the six weeks’ tour, during which the column Will cover 3,500 miles. The names of all the men who join the Army during the tour are being inscribed on the scroll. The Deputy-Prime Minister, Colonel Denys Reitz, wished the convoy God-speed and good luck on behalf of the Prime Minister. In the course of his spech, Colonel Reitz disclosed amid enthusiastic cheers that the reason for General Smuts’s absence was that he was visiting the troops in East Africa.

He told the men and women taking part in the “great trek of 1940”;— “Your going forth is a symbol of things to come. Our Army of to-day foreshadows our nation of to-morrow —the young nation that will arise

from the ashes of the war. This Army will form the nucleus of the nation of the future.” ■ The “Commando on Wheels” was given a rousing reception in Johannesburg and the Reef towns through which it passed on the first day of the tour. It spent the first night at Standerton—General Smuts’s constituency—where it was given a particularly enthusiastic welcome. People

lined the streets in all the towns through which the column passed, and it was estimated that about half a million turned out to see the miniature army during the first day of the tour.