LEGION OF FRONTIERSMEN.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 29 October 1924, Page 7

LEGION OF FRONTIERSMEN.

The article in last Saturday’s issue told of the founding of the Legion of its why and wherefore. This one will continue the story. The South African war happened before the Legion was properly started. Pocoek went to the Cape, and left the work meanwhile. Out there he met the New Zealanders and the Australians, and learned to love them as he had loved i the Canadians. There, too, were many of his old comrades with Strathcona’s Horse, and he found kindred spirits in Driscoll’s Scouts. He talked of his Legion, and the stern, hard-bitten colonial men fired with enthusiasm, and that veteran of a hundred fights, Driscoll, seized on the idea and shouted his opinion while he took Pocock’s hand in one of his mighty paws. Pocock afterwards said his hand felt as if a hippopotamus had stepped on it and then an elephant fell on the hippo. Driscoll later became the Legion’s a leader beloved by his .men in all parts of the earth, and he gave his heart and soul and many years of his life to the work. It was slow, uphill work organising the Legion, The men who were fitted to become members were hard to reach. They heard of it by word of mouth from others who knew, and the gospel was carried by trappers, miners, hunters, surveyors, engineers, sailors, guides and scouts into far places, and in 1912 the movement was making real progress at last. In 1912 New Zealand began to hear of it, and inside 12 months the right kind of men were falling over one another looking for the Legion’s application forms. The Legion was fortunate in finding several splendid organisers in Poverty Bay, Hawke’s Bay. Wairarapa, Wanganui, Northern Wairoa and other places, and the foundations of no lees than eight splendid squadrons had been laid by the time the Great War broke out. In this brief history of the Legion it is possible only to refer to outstanding points. It would take columns to record the incidents that occurred when the Empire called its frontiersmen to arms. The spirit of the legionaries was beyond all praise. They volunteered to a man. They made incredible sacrifices to get to the war. There were some 1700 members in New Zealand, and over 1200 went on service, the rest being over age or medically rejected; and the methods' by which some men got to the front after being refused admission to the forces would fill a book. Not one legionary waited for conscription. The members carried the Legion with them. On shellswept Flanders fields, in the dug-outs of Gallipoli, and on the deserts of Palestine they met their comrades from other lands, and they carried the messages of the Legion wherever they went. Legion lodge meetings were held under the fire of enemy guns. Quite a long roll of new members were admitted to the brotherhood of the Legion on those occasions, and the New Zealand section of the Legion made up. and more than made up, its awful losses. Canada, Australia, Africa and other parts of the Empire have the efirae story to tell of military service. Ever and always the frontiersmen were racing for the front. The Legion in England was no better off than here. It could not get away in a body, so the London command"* obtained a vessel of its own, j slipped across and served nobly with the Belgian army. Princess Patricia’s famous regiment was composed principally of. legionaries. The East African campaign gave the English Legion a chance, and a battalion of legionaries, under the name of the 25th Royal Frontiersmen Fusiliers, did noble service under Lieutenant-Colonel Driscoll. To-day the Legion, disorganised by long years of war and by the loss of hundreds of its brave officers and organisers, is preparing again for the day when the call may be sounded. We do not intend to be found unready when next our Empire needs its frontiersmen. All over the world, wherever Britishers are, the Legion is enrolling frontiersmen into the brotherhood, and New Zealand is leading the march. In all organisations depending upon purely, voluntary effort -progress is slow at times, but members* of the Legion know that it is the only order that .will suit the splendid men of the frontier, the men who do things that other people read about. The time has not yet arrived when the Legion can boast of an army a million strong, equipped and ready at its own expense, ready to give service for the flag the pioneer frontiersmen carried mto all seas., but the Legion of to-day is but the pioneer of the Legion of tomorrow. The great idea lives stronger than ever, and the fierv test of war has proved it true.