People and Their Doings.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20362, 20 July 1934, Page 6

People and Their Doings.

The Man Who Has Made British Military Bands the Envy of the World : The Origin of the Grenadier Guards : Artist Painted Arctic Pictures with His Thumb.

r pilE VISIT of the Grenadier Guards’ Band to Christchurch about the end of the year, presents a problem to the J. C. Williamson management, for there is no hall in Christchurch large enough tor the famous band of sixty or seventy instrumentalists. The Grenadier Guards have a long and interesting history. Originally a grenadier was a soldier whose special duty it was to throw hand grenades. Evelyn in his Diary says that on June 29, 1675, he saw at Hounslow “a new sort of soldier called grenadiers, who were dexterous in flinging hand-grenades.” The grenadier companies were formed always of the most powerful men in the regiment and, when the grenade ceased to be used, they maintained their existence as the “ crack ” companies of their battalions, taking the right of the line on parade and wearing the distinctive headdress.

In the British service the only grenadiers remaining are the Grenadier Guards, originally the Ist Regiment of Foot Guards, which was formed in 1660 on the nucleus of a regiment of English Royalists who followed the fortunes of Charles 11. in exile.

9 & THE TRAINING of the bandmasters for the Grenadier Guards’ Band is carried out under Captain H. E. Adkins, at Kneller Hall, Hounslow, an institution founded in 1857 and placed under the direct control of the War Office in 1867. Captain Adkins began his career by joining the Army as a band boy, and to-day he is responsible for the training of all the military bandmasters. He has made British Army bands the envy of the whole world. At the Wembley Exhibition of 1924 he

organised and conducted the massed bands of 1000 performers. A musical author of distinction, Captain Adkins has written many pieces for various instruments and also a treatise on military band instrumentation. * “ I never heard the National Anthem played,” said King George after a visit to Kneller Hall, “ until I heard Captain Adkins conduct it.” |jS jy[R EMANUEL PETERSEN, who was commissioned by the Danish Government to paint pictures of Greenland, spent six years inside the Arctic Circle painting the pictures with his thumbs. During that time he nearly died of scurvy, drifted for four days without food on floating ice, when alone and unarmed encountered a polar bear, and saw his baby daughter rushed to the verge of death by a runaway dog team. “ I had to paint with my thumbs instead cf brushes,” explained Mr Petersen, “ because the cold was so intense that the colours had to be mixed with petrol to keep them from freezing solid, and they would not work with a brush. One day when I took my wife and six-year-old daughter on a sledging trip the dog team that was harnessed to my little girl’s sledge bolted out on to sea ice so dangerously thin that if the team had slowed for a minute they would have crashed through. I gave chase. Realising nothing of her danger, Inger lay on the sledge laughing. At last I managed to turn the team on to firm ice. We were never nearer death, but my little girl thought it was just an exciting game.”

T>USSIA is making a bid to become “ the * world champion parachute country.” An official statement issued in Moscow says that already thousands of y’oung men and women have become qualified parachutists, and it is expected that by' the end of the year “ one million y'oung people will have been trained for the parachute jump.” It is also stated that a of a new design has been perfected by Savitsky, a Soviet expert, and will soon be produced on mass production lines. A y’oung woman named Slivina has been proclaimed the champion jumper, and she is now emploved as a “ recruiting ” officer, giving exhibitions of parachute jumping all over the country. It is stated that 360 clubs of parachutists are already active. 33? 32?

CIXTY YEARS AGO (from the “Star ° of July 20, 1574) :

Port Chalmers, July' 18.—Arrived, immigrant ship Sussex, after a voyage of 75 days from Gravesend, with 375 souls; all well. This week we have received over 1500 immigrants by four ships, viz., Caroline, Hindostan, Cartsburn and Sussex.

Employment of immigrants.—A satisfactory arrangement will probably’ be entered into, between the Provincial Government and the City Council for the employment by the latter of a number of the immigrants recently' arrived. It is proposed to employ' them in forming the belts and outlying thoroughfares of the city requiring attention.

The weather.—There was a very heavy fall of snow yesterday. During the afternoon there were occasional showers of hail, and about nine o’clock in the evening these gave place to a steady' downfall of snow, which lasted for several hours.