THE HOME GUARD

New Zealand Herald, Volume 79, Issue 24189, 3 February 1942, Page 7

THE HOME GUARD

IMPORTANT DUTIES

MAKING DEFENCE WORKS

ENTHUSIASTIC BATTALIONS

No longer in doubt about the importance of the task assigned to them in the general defence plan, Home Guard battalions in the Northern Military District, and in particular the Northern Fortress Area, are working with tremendous enthusiasm to complete various defence works throughout the district". Their only worry is that they might be used as pioneers; that the defence posts they are constructing will be occupied in action by other arms of the home defence forces. They are being told in all truth that in the posts they are digging they will fight, if necessary to the last, in defence of their homes. Army organisation of the functions of the Home Guard has resulted in the force which since its establishment has suffered many discouragements, being given the exact character it has always desired. Home guardsmen are troops in the fullest sense of the word. They are operational units whose chief responsbility in the sectors to which they have been assigned is to take the first thrust of an attack and hold it up until units of the mobile striking force arrive to reinforce and counter-attack. Well-trained Troops To an extent the Home Guard has always suffered from the deprecatory attitude of members of the public. It has also been handicapped by the apathy of some of its own members. As it stands at the present time it is not only cleansed of the unenthusiastic, leaving in active being a substantial core of keen, well-trained and welldisciplined troops, but it also merits and receives the admiration of the Army officers responsible for knitting it into the general defence scheme. On recent week-ends several officers holding important posts in the Northern Fortress Area, including an Expeditionary Force officer with experience not only in the Middle East but also of defence preparations in Britain,, have had good opportunity to measure the character of the Home Guard. They are as enthusiastic about the guardsmen as the guardsmen are about their work. Assistance From Army The Army authorities are giving every assistance they possibly can to the men who are doing such important work. They are aware of all the Home Guard's difficulties and doing what can be done to remedy them. Various

important decisions have been made recently arid may be expected to havi their effect shortly. One lias already been put into operation. Several battalions at work digging weapon pits last Sunday, including one which very successfully practised a midnight alarm and then worked on defence posts until 2.30 in the afternoon, were taken to their delence areas and later home again in Army transport. This scheme will continue to operate where other means of transport are not available. The new wave of enthusiasm which has swept over the Auckland Home Guard battalions is also receiving support from householders and farmers into whose yards and paddocks guards men have suddenly flowed with picks and shovels. They are being given a free hand in the use of materials necessary for their purpose and few have looked askance at these new and tangible evidences of the seriousness with which the Army is facing the situation in the Pacific. One or two have given voice to their shudders at "those hor rible things" in the vegetable garden or on the front lawn, but in general the spirit of co-operation from the public, extending to cups of tea and other comforts, could not be better. Inventiveness Shown Cheerfulness and determination certainly prevail among the guardsmen In one area visited on Sunday men working on defence posts refused to seek shelter when heavy rain swept down on them and went on with their job until ordered to stop. At another point, this time indoors, a number of men were giving not only their unpaid time but also their own materials to the making of' dozens of grenade throwers, grenades and other devices. Shown for the first time, pictures and literature of a British Home Guard home-made mortar and asked if he could make one for demonstration and test, the leader of these men said he would have it made in two days. He did not even bother to consider that to fulfil his promise he would have to lay aside his- civilian occupation for those two davs.