ACHILLES HEROES

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 71, 21 February 1940, Page 11

ACHILLES HEROES

FITTING RECEPTION,

AUCKLAND’S PLANS. I’cr Press Asseintion. AUCKLAND, Feb. 20. The biggest military parade held in New Zealand for many years will take place in Auckland city, when about 6000 officers and men of the New Zealand Division of tlm Royal Navy, the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force, the Royal New Zealand Air Force, Territorials and secondary school cadets, will parade in honour of the ship’s company of the Achilles. The first greeting to the light cruiser, fresh from her victory off Montevideo, will he from the officers and non-commissioned officers of the Third Echelon of the Expeditionary Force in Camp at Narrow Nock and from the Territorials on duty at the forts. They will line the North Shore cliffs and cheer the Achilles into the harbour.

Units of f.h Navy, Army and Air Force will take part in the parade, marching to the Town Hall. More than 0000 secondary school cadets in the uniforms of their respective units, and all the Auckland Territorial units, will line both sides of Queen Street from tho Central Wharf to Myers Street, leaving a lane through which the detachments and units of the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy, tho Expeditionary Force, and the Royal New Zealand Air Force, will march to form a gigantic guard of honour outside the Town Hall. A detachment from tho Achilles will leave the Central Wharf at 11 o’clock after the parade has passed and will march up Queen Street between the ranks of Territorials arid cadets to the Town Hall. It will then form up facing a platform to be erected outside the Town liall, from which addresses will he given.

The parade, representing the naval, military and air forces, will be commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel N. L. Mack.v, M.C., officer commanding the 21st (Auckland) Battalion, 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force. The streets will be decorated and employers are to be asked to grant special leave for their staffs. Queen Street will be dosed to vehicular traffic for three hours during the march through the city. About 1600 soldiers will come from Papakura to participate in the welcome, after which the captain, officers and ship’s, company will be enter-' tained at luncheon in the Town Hall.