RECRUITING MEETING

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4816, 28 July 1939, Page 5

RECRUITING MEETING

FIFTEEN SIGNED UP. NEED FOR TRAINING. POSITION OF NEW ZEALAND. Fifteen new recruits were secured for the Territorial forces at the recruiting meeting held on Wednesday evening in the Municipal Chambers. good response was received from the Maori race, about half of those who signed up at the meeting being natives. Major E. M. Mackersey, O.C. Waikato Regiment, presided over an attendance of close on 40 young men at the meeting, many of whom had recently joined the forces. Associated with Major Mackersey was Captain Pilcher, distrfct recruiting officer, and Lieutenant McDonald, of the headquarters staff, Waikato Regiment. Major Mackersey outlined the international situation since the Great War,-particularising upon the League of Nations failing to prevent the invasion of what is now Manchukuo by Japan, and Abyssinia by the Italian armies. When the League had become almost a dead letter, Germany, her western frontier secured by the remilitarisation of the Rhineland, then embarked on a series of aggressive ventures in the west, while Japan engaged in a major war with China. "The nations who have been unprepared have been overrun, and that will be our fate if we do not attend to our defences," said Major Mackersey. "Remember, it takes time to make a soldier, and there may not be much time for training in the event of an outbreak of war." Captain Pilcher said that though in the last great war we had a certain Pacific Power as an ally, Germany was still able to send out raiding vessels to sink merchantmen and lay mines in Cook Strait and the North Cape. To-day that ally was a potential enemy, and it appeared that the trade routes would no longer be kept open, and foodstuffs were accordingly being stored in inland towns of the Dominion. We were, he added significantly, preparing for the worst, for it appeared as if the Powers were merely sparring for time. "I am a gunner officer myself, and * I know it takes "three years to train a man even to aim an 18-pounder gun," he continued. "An infantryman has also a great deal to learn besides .firing a rifle—he must know the theories of fire power, fire strategy, and tactics, he must know the military commands. And if war came, the , enemy will not wait in its home bases to declare it. The first thing we will know ..about it will be that shells from warships and bombs from planes will be falling in Auckland. In 1914 we had trained reserves who volunteered almost to a man, and who were further trained for months at Trentham and in Egypt, becoming one the finest divisions in the Empire. Now we have no trained reserve of troops, and it is necessary to get some form of training as quickly as possible." Captain Pilcher appealed to the young man in two ways—through his duty to his country and his duty to himself. The second point was really one of common sense, for when an untrained number of soldiers were attacked by an efficient and well equipped force the result was slaughter. -If we were untrained and illequipped to meet an invader, our fate would be the same as the Chinese, the Abyssinians and the Republican Spaniards. "If this happens it will serve you fellows right, for we are giving you the opportunity to rise above a rabble," he concluded. Lieutenant McDonald outlined the constitution of the Waikato Regi'ment, drawn from an area exending from Huntly, Cambridge and the Coast down to Taumarunui, with battalion headquarters in Hamilton. Te Kuiti was to supply the three machine gun platoons of the regiment, the three-inch mortar platoon which with the machine guns made up the Support Company, being centred in Hamilton. Te Anga was attached to B Company with headquarters in Te Awamutu, and Pio Pio to C Company with headquarters in Taumarunui. Recruits had first of all to spend a six-day recruits' course at Ngarauwahia, where training would be accomplished that would take two years to instil in night parades. In. all, 20 days' training .would be paid for during the year—six days recruits' course, six days annual camp, and the remaining days in out-of-camp trainings a night parade counting a quarter of a day and a week-end camp 1% days. Payment was made at the rate of 12s a day for annual and recruits' camps, and 7s a day for the balance of the training. Major Mackersey added that there was a free issue of uniforms and boots, and money spent in journeying to and from camps was refunded.

In answer to Mr. L. R. Voyce, Lieutenant McDonald said that the recruits' camp training led up to the training at the annual camps, thus enabling tactical exercises to be carried out there. If man had had some previous training, it provided an excellent brushup. An appeal was then made for volunteers, and fifteen were signed up.