NEW ZEALAND ARMY AT HOME.

Northern Advocate, 7 December 1918, Page 1

NEW ZEALAND ARMY AT HOME.

seventy days' training. a beautiful rural park machine gunners at grantham.

(By H. T. B. Drew, 2nd Lieutenant.)

Each Reinforcement that leaves New Zealand for England includes a certain number of machine gunners, who, in addition to the ordinary Reinforcement course, receive special training for this work before they leave. They rank as specialists with the Reinforcements, here no suei) immediate distinction awaits them, for on reaching - England they go to the Infantry camps with the rest. But when specialsts are required for either the Machine Gun Corps or the Signallers applications are called for, and these previously trained men are

usually selected. Thus they receive a full month's infantry training , with the infantry at either Sling or Brocton, and are made expert in bombing, gas precautions, wiring, and ail trench work.

Popularly supposed at one time to be peculiarly dangerous work, the Machine Gun Corps in New Zealand were recruited from tardy volunteers, who were called for when the new men came in; but in reality circumstances are not quite so bad as that nowadays. As a matter of fact, machine gunners have the advantage—• it is usually considered an advantage— of a considerably longer period of training in England, and certainly they have in New Zealand, than the infantry; and with so much barrage work at the front these men during active service have a fair spell out of the advanced posts.

For their machine-gun training in England our men are sent to Grantham, a junction town on the Great Northern Railway. 102 miles north of London, and reached in two hours from the metropolis. This is the centre of the British machine-gun world. Over 50,000 men are camped round here undergoing training. One wonders what the number was in pre-war days when Britain held other views on the machine gun! There are three Imperial camps—Harrowby, where the G.O.C. and the schools are situated, and Belton Park and Chcpstone (the hst-nnmr-d being thirty miles away), where the draf'tfuifling units ;u'e camped. At each of these places the officers ami men arc divided into battalions; and New Zealand, whi/b has its camp ot Belton Park, comprises one battalion. In March last we had 400 men there, and on the Ist April last 1(54 officers and iyiT>s men had passed through. There have boen as many as 550 of our men there at one. time. It is a good system to have the camp hero, for it nrovides the best facilities fov training, the necessary ranges arc available, and the best qualified inMajor R. Hardie, who since has lost n' leg in the war, had charge of our first camp. 'IN CESSANT TOCX-TOCK.

To Belton l';u-k from Grantham Town is four miles. 'Basses Tor a ■small fee, and motor cars for a high one, carry you either way. Belton Park has* come into use as a campingground since the war, being an addition to the Harrowby School. It is the private park of Earl Browniee, ?uid the .grounds, which are really magnificent in their tree-clad sweeps, front Belton House, an old. roomy, mid-period mansion. High lands stretch away north and souUi,^ heavily wooded; and through the calm air perpetually comes the distant tock, tock, tock' of the ceaseless machinegun fire that any one from the front knows so well. Our own camp huts occupy a pictursque slope facing Belton House, and at the top of the slope stands, in ancient solitude, a magnificent old forest, for hereabouts are some of the finest woods of Britain. Only a few miles away are the Dukeries and old Sherwood Forest, with its rheumaticky, propped-up oaks. Nottingham is twenty-five miles away, arid Leicester and Lincoln about the same distance. Our men have thus ample to interest them, and, indeed, are very fond of this

place and its surroundings and wooded panoramas. The average time New Zealanders spend here is about seventy days. By that time they are reauy to go 10 France. There is more to learn in machine gunnery than accuracy of lire and knowledge of the mechanical construction of the weapon. Experts are ever heard to declare that we are only in the earlier stages of our knowledge of the effectiveness of the machine gun. Zones of fire, the most advantageous angles, choice of fields of fire, and other things have all to be learned, and since we barrage with this weapon up to IGUO yards, ranging from maps—like the artillery—to stay attacks, or to bespatter enemy concentrations or depots, most intimate knowledge of the things essential to the success of the work is necessary. The deadly machine gun bullet, with its sighing hiss, comes amongst you suddenly in flights from nowhere, death-dealing and fearsome as the bursting shells. Then officers and men must also know how to follow up and keep pace with the earlier waves of an attack, and where to place machine guns effectively and rapidly to hold up counter-attacks. At Messines our splendidly organised guns did magnificent work in this respect. This class of fighting particularly suits the initiative and courage of our men. RAPID GROWTH. New Zealand, when our men first went to Grantham, had only three machine-gun companies in the field; we sent another one over with the 4th Brigade before Messines, and still another went to France in December last. Our men learn quickly; indeed, one could say extremely nice things of them in the place they occupy with the "Tommies" at the schools, but comparisons are odious. Our battalion camp adjoins the Imperial huts, and we share a cookhouse with one of the Imperial units. In this case one can say that so close contact shows one how well by comparison our men faro in this department. The New Zealand half of the cookhouse is neatness itself, with its polished stoves and whitewashed walls, and on the other side —well, it is not so. For this cookhouse cleanliness and similar things in other parts of the camp our unit has been complimented by the Imperial CO. Ingenuity and care, and supplemented rations, enable our cooks to turn out meals that are the envy of the "Tommy"; and all this can be put down in the first place to the officers' greater active interest in the men, and —from the General in Charge of the New Zealand Forces in England downwards—to the careful supervision and non-perfunctory inspection of things. But these are facts the New Zealand homes must already be acquainted with from the letters' of the men themselves. The officers sha.ro a mess with an Imperial unit. It is not quite the mess 0n..« scnv. in our ottn-r camps. IN SPORT. Sport thrives at all the camps, and a very fine spirit of healthy rivalry exists' with the "Tommies." The Now Zealanders, who are popular, won all their Rugby contests this year with the execution of one against the Royal Naval Air Service team. They have also held their own at cricket and ''soccer." In other amusements —theatres, concerts, pictures —they are well catered for in the camp, and at Harrowby, where the garrison theatre is (two miles away), and at Grantham. The New Zealand men have their canteens, with their usual billiards, games, and anterooms; and a V.M.C.A. adjacent oilers them other attractions. There are bath-houses and all the usual appointments, and agriculture is proceeding in all spare places in our lines, in which the New Zealanders again show an example of

industry. Viewing this well-appointed and picturesquely situated camp from an old quaint archway structure that some equally quaint old nobleman erected many years ago on the wooded rise at the back of the camp, one thinks of what a delightful day New Zealand parents could spend in this secluded spot inspecting' the quarters of their sons! What pleasant strolls they could be taking down the shaded lanes in the park woods, where deer flit suddenly by, and where fat woodpigeons coo from the top branches! If our recruits in Trentham could conjure up this scene, how volunteers would rush for a seventy-days' traininc here!