OUR SOLDIERS ABROAD.

Waipa Post, Volume XII, Issue 587, 24 October 1916, Page 3

OUR SOLDIERS ABROAD.

TRAINING AND ORGANISATION. A SMOOTH-RUNNING MACHINE. (From Captain Ross, New Zealand’s Oilieial War Correspondent.) At the same town in France there was also a pay branch dealing with large sums of money run by quite a small but efficient staff. This department is regulated from London. A lieutenant is in charge, and supplies the field cashiers with the money required by the force in the field. The cash is obtained from the British authorities at the base. The office acts as a kind of clearing house, and squares the accounts between the New Zealand expeditionary force and the British army pay staff in France. Each of our company commanders is the paymaster of his company. He ge,ts the amount he requires, pays it out, and the men sign an acquittance roll,which is sent back to the office, and the thing is done. These acquittance rolls go to the London office, where there is a ledger account for every man in the expeditionary force. IN LONDON. At the head of affairs in London is a brigadier-general, who only a few years ago was a master gunner in New Zealand. He is a staff College man, whose organising qualities are well recognised, and it would scarcely have been possible to have chosen a better man for the work. He is in close touch with the general in whose hands is the administration of the New Zealand expeditionary force, and also with a thoroughly conscientious and hard-working military secretary who has the interests of the expedition at heart. From top to bottom the organisation has been placed on an excellent basis. A TUNNELLING COMPANY. New Zealand will-have lost sight of its tunnelling company, and the division has also lost sight of it; but a tunnelling company has to go where it is of most use, and it would have been of no use to the division where the division has been. Tunnelling companies are G.H.Q. troops temporarily allotted to a corps lor work in special areas. I have not up to. the pesent had an opportunity' of visiting the New Zealand tunnelling company, but from authentic information I know that the officers and men of which it is composed have been doing good work. The British troops in the area iir which they are operating say that they have absolute confidence that ' while the New Zealanders are with them they will not get their trenches blown in by a surprise mine laid by the enemy engineers. They have been successful, not only in mining against the Germans, but in discovering the German mines. They have found out , what the enemy is up to, and have checkmated him time after time to such an extent that they have placed him in the position of the under dog ' in this particular sector, just as our engineers and miners did in the case j of the famous Quinn’s Post on Gallip- , oli. The work is in charge of a major . well known in.Nevf Zealand. In another area I recently visited our No. 1 stationary hospital. It is the nearest British stationary hospital 1 to the great battle of the Somme, and doing splendid work, but as this arti- * cie is already over long I must reserve 1 a description of the hospital’s work 1 for another time. I hope to see more j of it at an early date.