TRAINING HARD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 January 1944, Page 3

TRAINING HARD

NEW ZEALAND DIVISION IN PACIFIC CLEAR DECISION DESIRED. AS TO FUTURE EMPLOYMENT. (Official War Correspondent, N.Z.E.F.) SOLOMONS. December 31. Today, months after the main body of the Third (New Zealand) Division set foot in the Pacific theatre of war, history is repeating itself. As then, the division is organising, taking in new officers and new privates, gunners and sappers, checking its mechanised equipment, calibrating its guns, and bringing up ammunition and supplies. Today, as then, training is in full swing in the reinforcement camps, and exercises are daily being “fought” in jungles and hills. There is this difference: the division has now had practical battle experience. Its reorganisation, today is rebuilding, rather than initial moulding, to replace the battle and sickness casualties sustained on Vella Levalla and Mono Islands and elsewhere where the sickly jungle has taken its toll. Today's fighting exercises are a realistic part of the eternal vigilance that is demanded of every man in the forward Solomons positions. Nearly all the reorganisation of personnel is the result of lessons learned in the two campaigns already fought.

First, this will be a younger man’s fcrce from now on. Jungle warfare put a strain on some of the older men that lowers their ability, if not their will, to withstand the continued heat and and wet and nervous tension. There are now few men in forward battalions over the age of 40. Save in exceptional circumstances they have been withdrawn, some to return to civil life in New Zealand, others to release younger and fitter men from base jobs. Taking the battalion commanders as an example, the average age today is a shade under 40, a drop of about five years since the first battles were fought in September, October and November. A number of the older men, along with a batch of sick and wounded, left jdr New Zealand the other day. They had come down from the north by sea, air and land, transferring to different types of transport as. many as five times, and taking up to a fortnight to cover the 1500 miles from the advanced lines to the base. HEALTH SAFEGUARDS. Though any troops stationed in the tropics must fight a continual war of hygiene against disease, the health of the New Zealanders is generally satisfactory. Naturally malaria has claimed a few victims, but though the threat of this malady demands the greatest precautions its depredations are less widespread than minor complaints of prickly heath, tropical sores and dysentery. A careful soldier treats the most minute scratch with antiseptic, maintains a' high pitch of personal and camp cleanliness. and fights flies with unabated intensity. After a bathe or a shower, he applies powder liberally to his skin to guard against the itching rash classified as prickly heat. Till recently minor sickness in the forward positions was aggravated by a shortage of a well-balanced diet, but as rations and cooking facilities have improved, their beneficial results on the health of the troops is most noticeable. The camp conditions today are a revelation. In the period of relative peace and quiet following action, the New Zealanders have concentrated ok making their living quarters a model of cleanliness and tidiness. Any visitor to. the camps over Christmas, and New Year might have been excused if he had expressed envy at the picturesque surroundings of the tents, the clean, well-formed paths of coral sand, and the general air of spruceness. RATHER WEARY WAITING. Yet if he watched keenly he could detect, beneath the Yuletide levity, the reaction wrought by dull and uninter- - esting inactivity. War is mainly a matter of watching, waiting and pre- • paring. Perhaps only a tenth of a sol- . dier’s life is spent in actual combat. . The rest is routine training and camp . duties. There is little leave to look t forward to in the Solomons. The nearest worth-while attractions are New Zealand and Australia, and neither at this stage is within the bounds of practical approach. 3 So again, as a year ago, the division t waits, as the G.O.C. put it in his Christ- ■ mas message to the people of New Zea- • land, “in a difficult and most uninter- - esting theatre of war.” It knows little ■ of what the future holds. It reads, in - news from New Zealand, of suggestions - that it should be withdrawn from the 3 Pacific either to serve in other theatres i of war or to relieve the shortage of r manpower in primary production. The - question its men are asking today is: ’ “What are they going to do with'us?” t The uncertainty is soul-destroying. The ) men want a decision one way or other. Whatever it may be they will accept i it gladly. What is it to be?