MILITARY EXERCISES

New Zealand Herald, Volume 79, Issue 24244, 9 April 1942, Page 9

MILITARY EXERCISES

TESTING COMMUNSCATIONS (P A.) "WELLINGTON, Wednesday Certain exercises, which on 0 this occasion do not involve a large-scale movement of troops, will be carried out during the week-end by mobilised Army units and Home Guard personnel, in the Central Military District, acting in conjunction for the first time. Besides being a test of communications, in which the most important phases of the operations will fall on headquarters staffs and the signals division, it will be a snap mobilisation of the Home Guard over the whole military district, which extends from Hicks Bay down to Palliser Bay and across the North Island roughly from Wairoa on the east coast to Waitara in Taranaki. Sealed orders, to be opened as the exercises develop, are in possession of Home Guard commanders, whose units will be required to assemble ready to man war stations. _ The communications exercises will be based on the assumption of both seaborne and air-borne enemy attacks with the object of destroying points vital to the economic life of the community and as information is received of the supposed enemy movements signals will be exchanged accordingly. This exercise should prove exceedingly valuable, apart from determining efficiency, in establishing stronger liaison between the two land defensive forces. Probably similar exercises will be carried out later, but on _ a more wholly organised scale and involving the movement of troops.