ANZAC MERGER

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20622, 1 August 1941, Page 6

ANZAC MERGER

SINGLE COMMAND AMERICA’S SUGGESTION WORLD'S BEST TROOPS (Per Press Association.) AUCKLAND, this day. The fusing of the New Zealand and Australian overseas forces into one command was strongly recommended by Mr. James Aldridge, a New York Times war correspondent, whose repeated successes since the outbreak of the war have won him a high reputation in his field. Mr. Aldridge, who has also been writing for some Australian newspapers, is passing through Auckland with the intention of reaching Moscow to cover the war on the Russian front. “An Anzac force," said Mr. Aldridge, “could easily become the best shock troops in the world. A combined force would give both the Australians and the New Zealanders their maximum effectiveness. “The New Zealand Division is too small, that is, as a single unit, to make the really effective contribution toward beating the Germans which the men are individually capable of making. If we do this, if we change the training methods and give them the equipment they must have, then nothing in the world could stop an Anzac force. Methods of Training “But we have to realise that the Germans have methods which outdate ours. We have regarded the bayonet as the focal point around which the infantryman’s training must be concentrated. The use of the bayonet by our training methods is the peak of the soldier's fighting purpose. All his training centres on the assumption that when he fights he uses his rifle and bayonet. “I should say in this war that about 1 per cent use the bayonet. I have ioi yet spoken to a man who could tell me that he has used his bayonet on an enemy or fired a bullet at a given individual enemy target.” From his experience in the present .var, said Mr. Aldridge, he would say the present training methods bred a completely wrong and, for the soldier, a dangerous psychology. He had seen many men whose faith in the effectiveness of their weapons, the rifle and the bayonet, was never fulfilled, because they were combating a type of warfare which, to a large extent, nullified their use. “The Australians have possibly outshone the New Zealanders because of the publicity which they have been given,” said Mr. Aldridge. “However, if you get down to hard facts, I would say that the New Zealanders were equally, if not more, in the fray in the last eight or nine months. “One of the things which we needed in our fights against the Germans was a picked body of mountain troops and I would say that the New Zeatanders impressed me as being excellent material for this type of force, that is, if they have to be kept as a single unit.”