MODERN ‘‘CAVALRY”

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21200, 24 August 1940, Page 18 (Supplement)

MODERN ‘‘CAVALRY”

MECHANISED FORCES HORSES OF STEEL RIDDEN NEW ZEALANDERS’ TRAINING (From the Official War Correspondent attached to the New Zealand Forces in Great Britain). ALDERSHOT, July 24 Throughout military history the cavalryman has been bound to his unit and his fellows by a special bond—this common love of their horses. In New Zealand the mounted rifle volunteer or Territorial is first a horseman, then a soldier. None, the less a good soldier on that account; in some senses a better. One did sometimes wonder, however, what the trooper would see in the military life if ever he should be parted from his horse. Now they have been parted. There is little place in modem warfare for mounted troops. To pit them against tanks or the dive bomber would be worse than the Light Brigade’s charge of the Russian guns at Crimea. Nevertheless, there remains great need for the qualities which made cavalry invaluable to British commanders in some of the famous campaigns of the pastmobility, surprise, speed, thrust in attack, concentrated hitting power for short periods. Thanks to “progress” the horse is no longer a military repository of those qualities; a motor vehicle may be. So although the trooper has lost his horse,.he remains mounted—over an internal combustion engine.

Old Associations In the New Zealand Expeditionary Force he continues to wear the familiar khaki and green puggaree, and, as a relic of his Territorial connectionfi he may have N.Z.M.R on his shoulder, but he wears neither spurs nor riding breeches. And if you were to confront him with a post-and-rail fence or a water jump, he would simply give his tank a little extra throttle and barge right through. For he is no longer Mounted Rifles; he is “Div. Cav.”, Divisional Cavalry. He rides tanks, or Bren gun carriers, or motor-cycles. Yet he remains a trooper, and, with variations of number, his regiment retains its former organisation into squadrons and troops. On the whole it is a happy compromise with necessity, in that it retains as much as possible of the old Mounted Rifle comradeship and esprit de corps upon which to build the new loyalty—of man to machine, and, through that, to the mechanised unit. Old mounted men, with memories of the fighting in South Africa and Palestine, might be critical of the modern trooper, who possibly cannot even ride; but those who have seen him take six tons and a half of lumbering steel up a rough hillside, or drive it all night over the desert in enemy territory, know him to be built of the same stuff as of old.

Improvisations Necessary The cavalry with the N.Z.E.F., like the infantry, included reinforcements, and their full utilisation has necessitated a certain amount of improvisation. Some of the men are being trained as motor cyclists, others as machine-gunners. If you would go with the Div. Cav. on one of our N.Z.E.F. field exercises, you must needs be prepared for early starts and late finishes; but you would have the satisfaction of knowing that you were out in front in attack and covering the rear in retreat. And you could not but be impressed by the enthusiasm, sound sense and strict attention to the job shown by all ranks. One of the reasons for that is doubtless the relative smallness of the unit—when compared, for instance, with an infantry battalion. It is easier for every man to realise the importance of his own personal part in a show when all can be explained to him, sitting among the bracken in the sun, by his commanding officer. Another reason is that all the officers and most of the senior n.c.o.’s are from the Mounted Rifles regiments of the Territorials. And a third, perhaps the most important of all, is that all of these men are on the sort of job they like. The horseman, although regretting the parting from his horse, keeps at least his cavalry organisation, much of his former cavalry movements, and his regimental friendships. To the new type of trooper a motor engine means almost as much as a horse meant to his comrade.