COMRADES IN ARMS

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 24 July 1935, Page 9

COMRADES IN ARMS

LORD G A LAY AY MEETS N.C.O. EE UNION AT GISBORNE. Old comrades who, though separated in army life by the wide gulf which stands between the commissioned and non-commissioned ranks in the Household Cavalry Brigade, found many memories in common in a discussion of their regimental associations in Gisborne when His Excellency the Governor-General, Viscount Galway, gave a private interview to Air Samuel Charles Wells, a resident of Poverty Bay for the past seven years, and formerly a member of His Majesty’s Life Guards. Air Wells, who is sub-station super's visor at Patutahi for the Public Works Department, was naturally averse to revealing the subject matter of his interview with the Gover-nor-General, but not to the discussion of the Imperial Army servico through which he is linked with His Excellency. This link is of particular interest, since it was in the same month, November, 11)04, that Viscount Galway and Air Wells joined the Life Guards. Viscount Galway was then Lieutenant the Hon. G. V. A. AloncktonArundel, and while lie had some prior service with a yeomanry regiment, he had a difficult apprenticeship to serve among the commissioned officers of the Household Cavalry, just as Air "Wells, as a private, had a hard row to hoe before he fell into the way of the Guards. Krom his place in the ranks Air AVells noted the rapid growth of popularity in the regiment of the young subaltern, to whom every detail of soldierly duty and obligation was invested with the keenest interest. By the men in the ranks lie became to be icgarded with that peculiar devotion which the average British soldier maintains for the best type of officer, and his talents as a horseman and as a sportsman in general became the boast of the regiment. , Mr AVells said that as a rider in J point-to-point steeplechases, at polo f and hunting, A’iscount Galway in bis i vounger days exemplified a feailessness and judgment to which the majority of his contemporaries could only aspire. In his work as a regimental officer lie demanded a high standard of discipline and performance, but himself set that standard and maintained it.