REGIMENTAL NOTES

Southland Times, Issue 23437, 18 February 1938, Page 12

REGIMENTAL NOTES

MECHANISED PLATOON AT WAIKOUAITI

(By

KHAKI)

Several members of the Motor-Cycle Platoon made the trip to the camp at Waikouaiti by road. After a good trip, the work of the camp proceeded in earnest and a great deal of training was carried out. This was all field work and covered reconnaissances as well as the use of the platoon as a fighting unit. The all-night tactical exercise was very interesting and, despite the large amount of work which the men were called upon to do, they acquitted themselves well. The work carried out during the camp was hard, but the training should prove valuable and the platoon can congratulate itself on coming through the camp without a single breakdown. At the last evening parade the first since camp, there was a fair turnout and the training settled down to the normal syllabus. The whole evening was spent in map-reading, in which good progress is being made. At the evening parade on February 7 the intelligence officer instructed the transport section in general map-read-ing. Tire various units which have received this instruction have taken a keen interest in the subject and more time will be devoted to it during this year’s training. It is proposed to carry out a night march later on in the year, with all units participating. There was a small parade of signalmen at. the last evening parade, which was spent in unpacking the technical stores just returned from the battalion camp at Waikouaiti. Arrangements were put in train for the forthcoming bivouac. This section regrets the loss of Private L. Hutson, who 1 has gone into the country. The motor and machine-gun platoons paraded in good strength and had a busy evening unpacking, checking and cleaning stores. ANNUAL CAMP The annual camp was this year held at Waikouaiti and saw the first appearance, as a unit, of the 3rd Composite Infantry Battalion. Troops attended from all parts of the South Island representing three regiments, Southland, Otago and Nelson-Marlboro ugh-West Coast.

Travelling and interior economy occupied the first day and from then on hard, work was the order of the day. Reveille each day was followed, immediately by coffee and physical jerks, an excellent combination for waking everybody up. Mechanical transport played an important part in the training and quickly demonstrated the speed and ease with which a fair-sized body of men can be moved, complete with arms and equipment and without fatigue to the man. Every unit went through training in embussing and debussing, and it was here demonstrated how easily a simple operation may become confused and noisy, a fatal error, particularly at night when sound carries so far.

Assault bridging was another subject treated and proved very interesting. Apart from these efforts, the usual training was carried out at high pressure and culminated in an all-night scheme. This took place on Saturday, January 31, and involved the occupation of a defensive position by night. The work was generally well done and proved the immense value of preliminary reconnaissance. Many other lessons were learnt and although the attacking force did excellent work, a draw was given by the umpires. Men from H.M.S. Leith co-operated. On the Sunday morning MajorGeneral J. E. Duigan inspected the battalion, which marched past. Major Sampson was C. 0., with Major Thomason M.M. as second in command. MECHANIZATION

The mechanization of an-army is not, as many believe, a new thing. When scythes were first fixed to the wheels of a chariot, when the explosion of gunpowder was first harmonized to throw a projectile from a gun, when a vehicle driven by a petrol engine was used for the first time to cany troops, an advance was recorded in the adaptation of machines to the service of an army—the process of mechanization. . Each development in mechanization produced a corresponding change in strategy and tactics. One particular change must be noted—the change that followed from the invention of the steam engine and the railway. In the time of Napoleon, when there were no railways, the size of an army in the field was limited by the fact that it had to live almost entirely on the country. Men and horses existed on such food and forage as they could find, with occasional help from slow convoys of horse-drawn wagons. It was impossible to put into the field a vast army of hundreds of thousands of men. for they would have starved. The advent of the railway changed all that. By the time of the Franco-Prussian War, only 60 years later, it was not difficult for an army following the line of a railway, to be supplied by train daily with all its essential needs in food and ammunition, even though it was hundreds of miles from the home country on which it was based. That brings us to comparatively modern times and to the petrol gineThere were lorries in the army before 1914, but the lorries of those days were still to come extent in the experimental stage. Although their potential value was recognized, they were kept well back behind the fighting line, in areas where the roads were comparatively good. By the time of the Armistice the situation was different. During those four years the development of the petrol engine had proceeded with abnormal rapidity. In the van of this advance were the aircraft designers, always struggling to produce a higher horse-power for a given weight of engine. The progress they achieved was used by the designers of all other vehicles that depended on petrol engines for motive power: the car, the lorry, the tank. During these four years began the process by which the river of military mechanization, divided itself into two streams, mechanical transport to replace horse-drawn vehicles and columns of men on foot and. armoured fighting vehicles not as substitutes, but as new weapons.