Despatches from the Front

In view of the advertisement placed in your paper earlier this year, your readers may be interested to learn of the progress of the University Regiment.

I wish to report that the strength of the Regiment now stands at four companies, plus seven additional service and support platoons. Thanks to your excellent series on "Demolitions and Engineering" and your feature "Locks and Shackles" we have been able to form an assault pioneer infantry platoon from volunteers out of No. 1 Company (the Wai-te-ata Expendables), which will shortly conduct training exercises in the vicinity of the Union Building. However you can be sure that your office will be notified in time.

A campaign planned for the early future may be of particular interest to readers. The Ministry of Defence has become concerned at the volume of insurgency incipient in the vicinity of lower Mount Street. The Regiment has been ordered to conduct anti-personnel operations in the area. By the time this letter is published a hand picked squad of men from the Kelburn Quarricrs (also out of No. 1 Company) will have completed their task.

Sometime early in '74, unless events necessitate earlier development, it is proposed to increase two companies — 3 (Calvary) and 4 (interrogation) to battalion strength, respectively to be known as the 14th Wairarapa Reprisers and the 5th Field Judiciary, thus bringing the Regiment to Brigade strength. No. 2 (HQ) Company shall remain as Brigade HQ Company and the seven auxiliary platoons shall remain as they are. The two new battalions may include one rocket battery and one mortar battery.

As there appears a very strong possibility of a third world war (WWIII - or as our stores officers might jest "war, world, third") persons interested in pursuing a regular or territorial military career (however brief) should write to the undersigned c/o Victoria University Regiment, P. O. Box 1643 Wellington.

[Readers may be interested to know that the Mount Street mutineers are evidently led by a retired colonel's insurgent sons following the notions of a court-martialled mess officer and self-sty led commander of the Red Army who was terminated with extreme prejudice in an action by an alpine assault team from the Mexico City Detachment of the Moscow Mountaineers sometime in the early '40s. — Eds]