MILITARY AND NAVAL NOTES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17999, 9 November 1926, Page 3

MILITARY AND NAVAL NOTES.

NEWS FROM BARRACKS AND PARADE GROUND. (By "GUNNER”) Whan the Armistice was Signed. At this date it is not inopportune to quote from Sir Douglas Haig s final Despatch from France: — The enemy was capable neither of accepting nor refusing battle. The utter confusion of his troops, the state of his railways congested with abandoned trains, the capture of huge quantities of rolling stock and material, all showed that our attack had been decisive. It had been followed on the north by the evacuation of the Tournai salient and to the south, where the French forces had . pushed forward with us, by a rapid and costly withdrawal to the line of the Meuse. The strategic plan of the Allies had been realised with a completeness rarely seen in war. When the armistice was signed by the enemy, his defensive powers had been definitely destroyed. A. continuation of hostilities could only have meant disaster to the German armies and the armed invasion of Germany.” The following is the telegraphic order received by the N.Z. Division on November 11, 1918. at about 8.30 a.m. “ Following from Third Army begins aaa Hostilities will cease at 1100 hours to-day, November 11 aaa Troops will stand fast on line reached at that hour which will be reported by wire to Third Army aaa Defensive precautions will be maintained aaa There will be no intercourse of any description with the enemy until the receipt of instructions from Army Headquarters aaa Further instructions will follow aaa Advise all concerned aaa IV. Corps aaa Time OSOO hours.” Evolution of Artillery. On Saturday the artillery officers had their monthly mess dinner. Captain A. S. H coper, the Wiltshire Regiment, and Lieutenant F. L. Simson, the Canterbury Regiment, were the guests. Lieutenant 11. W. D. Blake, 10th Battery, N.Z.A., gave a most interesting talk on the evolution of the artillery. The battle of Crecy was the first recorded time when gunpowder was used by the English, when the bombards “ threw little balls that frightened the horses.” The range in those days was only about 100 yards and their chief use was battering do\vn walls of castles and defended towns. Some of the guns in use in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were 17 fedt long and used as shot, stone balls 25 inches in diameter, about 4501 b in weight. Napoleon was one of the first who made any good tactical use of artillery against the other arms and some of his writings on the subject are ver}* interesting. The artillery were placed in advance to fire at the infantry and if they were charged by the enemy the gunners ran and took cover in the squares formed by their own infantry. The guns were all right, they were much too cumbersome to be moved away without proper teams. With modification due to modern means the principles that Napoleon worked on are what we work on to-day. Aerial Photography. The reconnaisanee by Captain Findlay of the area flooded by the Waimakariri last week is an indication of one of the methods by which the aeroplane can be of use in a non-military sense in New Zealand. Earlier in the year a complete aerial survey of the Waimakariri was made and at the request of North Island authorities a ’plane was sent up to Masterton to take photos of floods in that vicinity. The City Council has, also, make a survey of Christchurch. During the war aerial photography was one of the most useful of the many discoveries made. It proved to be the only reliable method of identifying a particular target or place. A hostile battery, for instance, might be located approximately, but not so definitely that one could put a pencil point on the map and say “ that is it.” An aeroplane would then go up and take a photo of the suspected area, which would be examined by experts and the actual pin point of the battery would be found. It is almost-impossible to conceal everything from the camera. The observer can only look in one direction at once. He has a tremendous area to watch and he is moving at very great speed, but the camera will give everything away. The naked eye cannot see where the grass has been crushed by the passage of men or vehicles, nor can it readily discover the difference between good camouflage and the real thing; it cannot see the blast marks in front of the muzzles of guns until they are very old. nevertheless, the camera will do all things and make a permanent record of the slightest change. It is the shadow that the lens picks up or the reflection, and where these have been altered,’ as one might say, artificially, they stand out conspicuously on the photo. Colour makes practically no difference but a regularity of arrangement is obvius. Anything in the shadow is concealed, but otherwise the shadow is what gives away the position, whether it is that of a man, a vehicle, a trench or a building. The most conspicuous object of the last is the human face. Troops in the open are inconspicuous so long as they are not in regular formation and do not look up. The moment they look up the ground seems to be covered with little white specks, as though sugar had been sprinkled from a caster and the observer has his target. From the flying ma,n’s point of view it is not always a bed of roses. He has to go and do his job flying regularly up and down the enemy’s position, and usually in a bus that is not too well equipped for defence, as regards speed. He is the target of every gun that is within range and the sooner his swag of plates are finished the happier he is. He has to cover a definite area, and of course fly at the same height all the time, so that the photos can be joined together afterwards. Those whose job it was to fight on the ground were very grateful for this accurate information and that the R.F.O. was fairly efficient is evidenced by the fact that when information was urgently wanted, the photo would be delivered in the front line within two hours of being asked for. Sailors’ Yarns. Without the slightest warning a barefaced attempt has been made to throw two of the Royal Navy's dearest legends into the deep blue sea for ever. The culprit is the “Army, Navy and Air Force Gazette,” which, purely in the interests of official accuracy, finds it necessary to point out that: The sailor’s black silk scarf is not in mournful memory of Nelson, but was worn many years before Trafalgar; the three white tapes round a sailor's collar do not represent Nelson’s victories at Copenhagen, the Nile and Trafalgar, but originated in 1857 merely as ornament. Happily a master mariner at Portsmouth has been repeating the legends and sailormen will no doubt continue to do so. Otherwise all the traditional romance of the seafarer will disappear, including the stories that:— Bell-bottoms were invented so that sailors could roll them up over their knees when holy-stoning the deck. A sailor’s cap is so shaped in order that he can keep love-letters in it. His collar was first, worn because Nelson's sailors wanted something to protect

their jumpers from oily perruques. His “ditty-box” is his very own and cannot be opened by an admiral or eveu by the police without a search warrant. Should sailors be deprived of their common lore, surely officialdom should be. compelled to shed some of its conceits. Why, for example, should regulations insist that—a hammock must be lashed with seven rings round it—no more or less; a lanyard be three-strand-ed and always have a jack-knife at the end of it; a sailor's hat be worn square on the head while Beatty wears his sideways: a sailor’s hat tally be tied with a neat bow and not a rosette. And lastly, why should depots like Chatham, Portsmouth and Devonport be officially termed H.M.S. Pembroke, H.M.S. Victory and H.M.S. Vivid respectively, when they include not only ships but barracks, offices and docks as well? Cupid and th© War Office. Though Cupid’s business is mainly concerned with hearts, it is known that he is heartless. # Some day, therefore, one of his darts shot along the beam from the eye of an Army schoolmistress, may pierce rather deeper than the tunic of a private soldier, a lance-corporal, corporal, or lance-sergeant. And why not? What is to prevent a love affair between a son of Mars with less than three stripes on liis sleeve and an Army schoolmistress? The answer is supplied by a coldblooded War Office paper just issued. There it is laid down in the most heartless fashion that an Army schoolmistress “must not choose a husband below the rank of sergeant.” A sentimental representative of the “Evening Standard” called at the War Office to inquire into this apparent flouting of all the dictates of the heart. One could picture a committee of callous old generals drawing up rules for falling in love as if the operation was a sub-section of an Army regulation. Here obviously was a flagrant denial of the freedom of the subject in one of the most important phases of life. “Not at all,” said a War Office official, cheerily. “The reason for this regulations turns entirely on the question of married quarters. “I don’t suppose the Army Council care whether a private or a regimental sergeant-major falls in love with an Army schoolmistress, but regard has to be paid to married quarters. “Now a married schoolmistress must have housing accommodation equivalent to that Of a warrant officer (class 2). The married quarters of sergeants meet this requirement. “But you could hardly raise the married quarters of a private soldier to the status of those of a warrant officer (class 2). So you see the whole matter is one in which regard is had rather to the status from a housing point of view than to the romantic subject of falling in love.” Army schoolmistresses are employed to teach the children of soldiers married on the strength. At present they are required to go abroad if called on.