NEW COMMAND

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20602, 1 November 1941, Page 2

NEW COMMAND

COLONEL R. S. PARK N. 7. TROOPS IN BRITAIN

Formerly dislriel artillery officer, Central Military District, Wellington, Lieut.-Colonel (temporary colonel) R. S. Park, Royal New Zealand Artillery, who has been appointed Officer Commanding the United Kingdom Section, New Zealand Expeditionary Force, was selected shortly after the outbreak of war to act as liaison officer between the New Zealand Government and the War Office, in order to expedite the fulfilment of orders lor military materials. He left for England toward the end of September, 1939.

In addition to seeing that all orders from New Zealand received prompt attention at the hands of the War Office officials and private contractors, he was required to keep the Minister of Defence posted with information concerning the latest developments in armament and equipment adopted by the British Army. In this connection he succeeded Colonel D. H. W. H. Donaldson, Auckland.

the Russian war they knew no arduous campaigns involving weeks and months of nerve-racking trench warfare, -but only short, swift drives which took them to the far corners of the Continent. They are soldiers of movement, of lightning-like blows, able to give to the full of their strength and energy in brief combat. They are blitzkrieg soldiers.

But the war in Russia is no blitzkrieg, and there lies the reason for the change coming over the German soldier. For the first time his stamina and his endurance are being tested. For the first time he has found an opponent to try his. mettle. Fighting Conditions

One German tells what happened when his unit got a chance to bathe. They were detailed to guard an airport along one border of which ran a broad, swift river. But as the soldiers plunged naked and shouting into the clean, cold water, Russian tanks loomed suddenly out of the woods and raked the field with fire. Russian bombers roared in v the sky and machine-gun bullets slashed the beach. Naked and ■ helpless, the soldiers crowded to the banks’while a full-fledged attack began. Many were hit and sprawled back into the water. Others managed to reach the barracks, grab clothes and guns, and, half-dressed, return the Russian fire.

The battle grew. German guns and tanks appeared, German fighters to attack the Russian planes. Then reinforcements began to arrive by air. Junkers troop transports flew in and landed, somehow, with guns and men The airport was held and the Russians, a force supposed to have been contained deep in the forest by a German encirclement, were driven off. Numberless incidents such as this are reported day by day from the tremendous eastern front. One could write a book on the trek of the troops in Finland alone, where tanks, trucks and automobiles are useless and the men must hack their path through the clinging underbrush and pick their way, hour after hour, over trembling bog hassocks where bottomless swamp water gurgles as they pass. In the night the primeval howl of wolves harries the dreams from which they may at any moment be awakened.to sudden combat.

A keen Swiss observer who has watched the German Army grow and fight has this to say of the German soldier: “Like Prometheus, these youths have stormed the castle of the gods. But is not the final fate of Prometheus deeply tragic? Does he succeed in toppling the masters of the world? Must he not, chained to a rock above the abyss, pay for his presumptuousness with eternal penitence?”

Time alone can answer that question. But the Russian war is changing the German soldier.