THE HORSE IN TIME OF WAR

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 84, Issue 179, 1 August 1940, Page 4

THE HORSE IN TIME OF WAR

VALUABLE IN NEW ZEALAND

USE IN HOME DEFENCE

Although horse units proved of little value in France in the last war 1914-18, after Geneial Allenby’s cavalry regiments had played their part against the advancing German cavalry, mounted rifle troops were successful in Palestine, over sand dune and rolling country. To-day, it is recognised that against motorlsect transport, the horse is not of great value, except, of course, as a means of transport. In a country like New Zealand, however, where rough country presents obstacles to tanks an! lorries, a horse regiment may well be master of the day. It is for that reason that special squadrons of mounted rifles are being formed. Colonel J. H. Whyte, D.S.O, D.C.M., of Palmerston North, formerly a member of the Wanganui Education Board, together with Captain G. F, Yerex, N.Z.S.C., are now on a tour of the Dominion organising the units. They have begun their work at Whangarei and are moving southward. Scope for Horse Units.

There is plenty of scope inland from Wanganui for mounted rifle units and there is a good deal of interest bemg taken in the organisation now in progress. There are to be nine squadrons, the strength of which has not yet been announced, but is presumed that these will be divided into troops, each with about 100 men. The ages of men being absorbed in these units will be between 25 and 55 years. New Zealand defence has always been fully shared by mounted rifle units. In Wanganui there has been the Queen Alexandra Mounted Bines to the north and the Manawatu Mounted Rifles to the south. In the new scheme of things there is to be a motorised unit absorbing some of the ground within the city, which was a sort of no-man’s-land between the Manawatu units, which came as far as Marton, an dthe Queen Alexandra Regiment, which came to Waverley. Major G. S. Peren, Palmerston North, is to command the new motorised unit.

The squadrons Colonel Whyte Is forming, however, call for horsemen, and not motorised troops. The aim is to have ready mobile units for defence in those regions where median ised' forces find it difficult to operate. Block the Parapara Road, for instance, the Turakina and Wangaehu Valleys, and the Wanganui River Road, and motor transport would find it hard to make headway. Horse units, however, would be at home. It is as well to recall at such a time as this that mounted regiments were prominent in the old days of the Maori wars. Before the mounted rifles units known to the present generation m New Zealand, there was the llgnt cavalry organisation, which first came into existence about 1860. The Colonial Defence Corps was a highlyuseful body in country patrol and in the Maori wars of 1863 onwara In various districts from Wellington and Hawke's Bay to Taranaki an a Auckland. The Auckland squadrons, under Colonel Nixon, served throughout the Waikato War; their gallant commander was fatally wounded at Rangiowahia in 1864. After the van ous campaigns there was still need for cavalry along the Waikato frontier and other borderlands m the heart of the island, and so the Waikato Cavalry and similar corps came into being. Farmers and their sons made up these highiy-successful bodies of settlersoldiers, commanded by such notable oliiqprs as Major Jackson, of the Waikato Squadron, and Captain John Bryce, Kai Iwi, West Coast. These corps gradually were replaced by tlie Mounted Rifles, organisations which discarded the sword and used the horse mostly for transportation only. The fighting lor which the M.lt. were trained was chiefly action on foot. In a Waikato wartime mounted squadron diary an Auckland writer discovered the first menlioa of mounted rifles as distinct from cavlary. In the early part of 1864, two officers discussed mounted arms suitable for the Waikato lighting; they were Colonel Henry Havelock, on General Cameron s stalf, and Major von Tempsky, of the Forest Rangers, when on a night march from Te Awamutu camp to attack Kihikihi. Havelock (son of Sir Henry Havelock, of Indian mutiny fame; advocated tne horse as a means of transit for riflemen, the lighting to be done on foot only. Camp at Wanganui. On August 13, officers and non commissioned officers of mounted rifle regiments are to be congregated on the Wanganui Racecourse ana will be commanded by Colonel H. B. Maunsell, 0.8. E., E.D., of the Wairarapa, who was in Wanganui in June to attend the annual interprovincial conference of the New Zealand Farmers Union, when he made an appeal for the use of horses for men entering these camps. The response in Wanga nui to his appeal was more than 50 oilers of hacks suitable for army work.