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AHEM !

SPIT AND POLISH. IN THE ARMY NOW. (By the Chief Reporter). There must be no suggestion, I was told, that the army has abandoned spit and polish.. . There were one or two other instructions, before the big Government sanctioned tour of the Northern Military District began,, bitt nothing much that mattered to me was contained therein. Plain sailing. Then the voice of authority spoke again. “Remember.... no suggestion that spit and polish has been cut out. Keep off that.” I promised. Scoria And Sweat. Thirty soldiers toiled in a quarry. It was a war mafternoon. Occosionally they stopped for draughts of water from army bottles. On the staging ,six privates, stripped to the buff, swept scoria down into the big A.S.C. truck. The A.S.C'. driver tinkered with his engine. He had just changed a tyre. Along the road another quarry—a great gash, lately carved out of a pretty hillside. More soldiers. More toil. More lorries.

In a paddock by the sea, young New Zealand boys carried heavy machine-guns. The boys wore shorts and singlets. Their socks were rolled down over their boots.

Further along a sergeant barked harsh commands at a platoon of boys with fixed bayonets. “In-out-in-out-in-out! On guard! In-out!” It was stacato. The boys perspired. Their shorts and shirts were more than ample in the warm morning sunshine.

On a wharf twenty boys passed back and forth carrying timber to a barge. Timber for the works out there on the island.

In among the tea,-tree, as I scramble dup a hillside with an agile colonel, I found men digging a tunInel. They were a long way in. The barrow loads were frequent. More perspiration. Cooks bent oevr the army stoves. They lifted, stirred, scrubbed, poured and lifted again. Men peeled potatoes. Where spit and polish? w Shoes And Horses. A Hill Billy, stalwart trooper of an Independent Mounted Rifles patrol, was shoeing horses. He handled his tools expertly. There were a row of horses, some of them restive, a few ill-tempered, waiting to be reshod. This man’s only complaint was that he had no stripes—not even one stripe. Whcih meant no extra pay. However, he was living in hopes.... Maori boys plaited and nailed the nikau, which aoffrds such grateful shelter when the P.W.D. have not had time to get around to build the mess-hut. After all, the P.W.D. is doing its best an,d according to senior officers it’s a great best. Two score soldiers spread the scoria from the quarries. Spread it on a road twenty miles away. Some more Hill Billies hammered joyously in a fern-lovely gully. They were building their mess-hut, and , they worked quickly. Twenty miles further on soldiers were transportclay dug from slit-trenches — brest high weapon-pits which gape in the grass, traps for night prowlers. In the trenches men toiled with spades. Where spit and polish? Everywhere, as we passed about the countryside, it was the same Work was the order. Even at brigade headquarters. Non-commissioned officers and the brigade staff bent to their tasks over maps and papers. Orderlies pecked at typewriters. . Motor-cyclists hurtled by in clouds of dust. Stores And A.S.C. In the A.S.C. stores men performed immensities of labour. They lifted, sorted, and lifted again. Stores of every kind were m their strong arms.... The petrol, in small drums, came out on an endless chain of bronzed hands and arms. So did the ammunition. The bread, the meat, the butter. In the A.S.C. garages, mechanics grimy with grease and oil, plied their expert trade. Further on, drivers of the same great unit were bivouacked in a little fold of the hills, down on one of the loveliest beaches I have ever seen. Four of them were cooking the dinner. Others tinkered with the engines of their parked wagons. The majorit ywere at as- ! sault drill, racing up and down the J

slopes, bayonets fixed, rifles at the ready. vvnere spit and polish?

Shorts And Shirts. So it went on, day after day, my restless quest ior s. and p. Always £ found the New Zealander, usually stocKy, sometimes ridiculously tail and skinny, like a pronged sapling, uresseu m anything but a presentable uniform. Often enough snorts and. smrt, or shorts .and jersy, or shorts and naked torso. Usually working at something. Chopping wood, perhaps, stoking fires. in me times out or ten buffeting something improvising w|ith bits .and pieces. AU very good. Excellent, indeed, but where s. and p.? I told the majors, and the headquarters captain in charge of the party, that i must have some s. and p. They agreed that it was most necessary.... No luck. Only toil .and sweat —and, of course, eating. Much eating. The New Zealand army must have heard that shop-worn stuff about armies and stomachs lion: Curious that the famous line is abopt the only place in which one caff, with propriety, mention “stomach” in print. Sub-editors are shy of it.) Staff And Brass. lAt night, sitting down to dinner, the majors were worried. They had failed to discover any s. and p. for me. Perhaps, they suggested, perhaps they would do themselves, as bright and shining examples of s. and p? To this end they .had changed into their city serge uniforms, with i gleaming brass. All day they had been in battle-dress. No, I told them, I must have s. and p. Two headquarters majors, dining in a wayside hotel, wouldn’t fill the bill. It began to look as though there would be no s. and p.— except in the gleaming cookhouses, in the so well-kept latrines, the neat tents and the healthy freshness of shingle-floored nikau mess huts. My journalistic soul sank. No spit and polish. It would ruin the series. My_articles would be unpleasing to “the powers,” civilian and military. Eureka I But the sun came up in splendour on Sunday morning. I found s. and p. The toilers, the diggers of drains and trenches, the hewers of wood, the carpenters, the plumbers, the all-services A.S.C. men, the spreaders of shingle, the cooks, the labourers of the buhai, marched out to church parade. They Jmarched as all good New Zealand troops, trained troops, march. That is, they marched so that it was ,a sight worth jumping out of the car be behold. They marched by in full battledress, three by three, looking to my civilian eye like British regulars. Our senior major stood stiffly to attention by the roadside ,took tne salut.% ; as the bronzed companies swung by. The eyes came round — forgive the journalese!—with a click Crunch, crunch, crunch. “Company, eyes right!” Again, at a field ambulance camp, I found A.S.C. ambulance drivers performing miracles of precision, drill, in and out of their vehicles, to the direction of the smartest sergeant I have ever seen. At last I had found it. (Jentle reader, the New Zealand Army has not abandoned s and p.!

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Permanent link to this item

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/GRA19420523.2.69

Bibliographic details

Grey River Argus, 23 May 1942, Page 6

Word Count
1,146

AHEM ! Grey River Argus, 23 May 1942, Page 6

AHEM ! Grey River Argus, 23 May 1942, Page 6