"Tankies"

When we finally came to corps training the fortunate 6nes were placed in the Royal N.Z. Armoured Corps, while the privileged of those went into the N.Z. Scottish Regiment. We learnt in those four and a half week of specialist training, wireless procedure and maintenance, gunnery, driving and tank maintenance. D-day as far as we were concerned was the day we moved out of camp to engage the enemy on "Operation Twelve and Six," which was a three-day manoeuvre out in the desert. About thirty Valentine tanks, five carriers and two Daimler scout cars (manned by the Scottish), and numerous other jeeps, lorries, and breakdown trucks were engaged on the scheme and yet all but two vehicles came back under their own power, but there were of course countless delays while broken tracks were mended, feed pipes renewed or radiators plugged. Even many seasons of sleep-out around the shores of Lake Taupo did not harden one to the rigours of sleeping beside a tank on nights so frosty that the blankets would be hard by morning (and this was the summer!). There was tremendous practical value in this three-day scheme, not only of keeping one's vehicles in running order, but also of living together as four men teams inside the tanks, and this last was perhaps the most essential of all. Once the victors had returned to base there remained only the cleaning up to do before we were ready for home. Military training need not be dreaded; there is good food and a good time provided one is willing to accept the situation. The life if perhaps, rather sterile for university intellectuals, but if all our "ivory-towerists" were to spend only a few weeks in a military camp they would soon learn that co-operation is essential in community life, everyone must pull his weight. Here we ought to have a community life, and who knows, by the time we have all experienced" the Army, maybe we will.

"Slidex 865694."