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VI
Off the Record

Looking back on the months spent in the Treasuries, one of the most surprising facts is that boredom was kept so well at bay. The plentiful and praiseworthy supply of films at both New Zealand and American open-air theatres, USO shows, the Kiwi concert party and the divisional band all helped, but for the most part the troops made their own fun. Each battery was devoted to its own sport. Regimental headquarters and the 49th favoured volley ball, the 50th excelled at football, the 52nd at water polo and swimming. The 49th Battery took a title at the island boxing championships (Gunner G. H. Briggs). Regiment was third at an acquatic carnival at Falamai on Boxing Day and was runner-up in a tug-o-war contest at a big gala day in March, 1944. At this function the 49th Battery conducted a poker darts stall which did a roaring trade. Native canoe and yacht making were universally popular, though some of the results showed all the characteristics of submarines. Inter-battery wood chopping and tug-o-war contests resulted in wins for the 52nd. There was a phase when every second man was making souvenirs out of perspex, shell cases or coconut shell and Lance-Bombardier N. M. McLaren (52 Battery) won the award for best exhibit at a Treasury Islands handicrafts exhibition.

To supplement the Christmas festivities, when officers and sergeants served the men in gaily decorated messes, each battery staged a concert and these parties went on tour round the regiment. Lieutenant R. M. R. Turnbull, Lieutenant G. S. Martin and Sergeant C. F, P. Martin were leading spirits in the 49th Battery show, Gunner J. F, Botting and Gunner H. G. Fraser in the 50th Battery, and Gunner A. L. Ward in the 52nd Battery, The latter was an indefatigable organiser of entertainments and was also responsible for a highly successful wives, sweethearts and babies show and helped organise several debates. Smoke concerts (on the rare occasions when there was any beer), mock courts, cards and draughts tournaments and race meetings helped to fill in the evenings. Sergeant M. E. Griffiths wrote and produced a riotously popular play, 'The Mystery of Mona Stirling,' showing a truly masterly touch in overcoming by illusion and somewhat lurid reference the impossibility of providing any page 171visible sex interest. One of the worthiest and most sustained efforts for the good of the regiment stands to the credit of Gunner D. A. Rees, of the 52nd Battery. It is doubtful if his achievement in issuing a news sheet of world doings daily from the time the unit was first in Necal, throughout the period in the forward area, and in Necal again until the end, has ever received the recognition it deserves, and tribute is gladly paid here. Working almost entirely in his off-duty hours, he was to be found at the most outlandish hours of the night listening to any available news broadcast and taking it down in shorthand, to be typed for the noticeboard next morning. As the sets failed one after another through dampness, he was forced to go further afield for his news and eventually had to listen by telephone on a link with the divisional signals set at regimental headquarters, contending with frequent interruptions through the line being required for other purposes. Once he was even seen, notebook on knee, trying to catch what was audible above the wind and waves, of a news broadcast from a ship lying half a mile away in the harbour. But in best newspaper tradition, the news always came out.

The other journalistic effort was a very periodical periodical, The Forty-Niner, edited by Sergeant Martin and Lieutenant Turnbull. The first issue published in New Caledonia was preoccupied with a remark by an august parliamentary personage on seeing the 49th Battery contingent at a ceremonial parade. This remark, which was ever after addressed to the 49th in moments of stress, is alleged to have been, 'What are these?' One scribe suggested that this was carrying brevity a little too far and suspected that the personage was afraid of being found out in his plagiarism. The full quotation, as copied from Shake-spear's Macbeth, he added, is, 'What are these, so withered and so wild in their attire that look not like the inhabitants of earth and yet are on it.'

Every unit has its 'characters,' but it is during a static period like the later months on Treasury that their worth is tested and they emerge as just a nuisance or a source of diversion and entertainment. In the latter class undoubtedly was Tommy (Gunner T. C. Le Quesne). Gunner Rees won a contest for humorous prose in the Kiwi News with his article 'Batman Superb' describing his passages at arms with his 'boss,' Lieutenant J. C. Graham, which was certainly not exaggerated. Tommy it was page 172who was interrupted in his labours by a visiting High Military-Authority. They regarded each other with mutual interest for some moments when the HMA sensed that something was lacking and saluted. Tommy tolerantly returned the salute and went on with his bedmaking. 'Well I was bloody busy,' he remarked later in explanation of the whole incident. He also moved one of the battery 'poets' to perpetrate the following:

'A rube of a batman Le Quesne
Drove his master almost insane,
Till the long-suffering latter
Rose and smote the mad hatter
Requiescat in Pace Le Quesne.'

While in the Treasuries Gunner D. B. Barry, the 52nd Battery's canteen manager, constantly had for sale large and varied stocks. He was even able to supply other batteries and infantry units with surplus items almost unknown in those parts. Only gradually did his modus operandi leak out. Almost before a ship lost way on arriving in harbour he was aboard accompanied by a stooge who incessantly addressed him as 'sir' in such a respectful, not to say awe-stricken, tone that Gunner Barry had little difficulty in persuading the ship's canteen manager to supply so obviously important and influential a personage with the best of what he had in stock. These the stooge bore away while Gunner Barry as often as not agreed to honour the ship by accepting an invitation to dinner. When New Zealand naval vessels arrived, however, he had to admit defeat in speed off the mark to Major R. M. Foreman, of the 54th Anti-tank Battery, who had the advantage of his own private intelligence system. It used to be said that no one ever reached one of these ships less than three beers after 'Bruiser.'

One of the worst afflictions that beset the regiment was an outbreak of instruments variously termed tonettes, song flutes and sweet potatoes, distributed by AEWS which, in spite of its many other good works, had much to answer for on this account. Six men sitting solemnly in a tent practising six different 'tunes' on these fiendish instruments produced in massed effect a dirge of such indescribable melancholy as to make a Scot rend his bagpipes in despair. One of the most persistent offenders was Lieutenant G. S. Martin, who added to the offence by ascribing his efforts to Tschaikowsky and others. The predominance of page 173farmers in the regiment was responsible for young farmers' clubs being among the most permanently successful institutions.

For those of lower tastes experiments in making coconut homebrew and sampling that mysterious and hard-come-by beverage, jungle juice, provided a diversion, often followed by moments of deep repentance. Then there were those people, affected their friends declared by either the foregoing or the climate, who swore their tent floors at night swarmed with landcrabs as large as dinner-plates and spent hours devising elaborate traps for them. Captain J. B. McFarlane for weeks disturbed his tent mates with wild swipes under his bed with a machete and pointed to a hole under one bed leg as evidence that the daddy of all crabs was trying to swallow him. However, he remained unconvinced to the last that it was the crab which ate a pineapple he brought back from the centre of Mono.

The survey section argument circle was a definite part of the life of regimental headquarters. It used to be said that anyone could be guaranteed an argument on anything at any time by visiting the surveyors. Certain it is that while others were expending energy on divers exhausting pastimes the surveyors could frequently be found taking a knotty problem to pieces at their ease. From early Necal days when singsongs round a bonfire on the river bank were a favourite evening relaxation, Gunner W. H. Aitken was a leading spirit in musical entertainment at headquarters, while Sergeant J. E. Corbett's repertoire of one song was always a star turn.

The 50th Battery's sound strategic position on a stretch of bumpy road and near a sharp corner was much envied in early days on Treasury. Other batteries swore that this battery's principal fatigue was a road picket whose duties were (a) to deepen the potholes in the road and (b) to spirit away with all possible speed the cases of supplies that consequently fell off passing lorries. The leading gambling spirits in the 50th Battery were the cooks (dehydrated eggs being sufficient of a gamble for the remainder). There was a certain amount of opposition, however, from a Saturday night poker school in the officers' mess, at which officers from other parts of the unit were regular guests. The matter came to a head when the cooks challenged the battery commander, Major Menzies, and second-in-command, Captain L. G. Mitchell, to a 500 match, and triumphantly retained their supremacy.

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Whatever other diversions presented themselves, however, rumour always ran a good second to 'Maori PT' as favourite indoor sport. For long nothing more was asked of a rumour teller than that he should be able to find some new spot on the map to which the regiment was going. This culminated in the report that one battery was to land in France and another in China and carry out a pincer movement on the world. After every known spot on the earth's surface had been covered, however, it became necessary to advance some really convincing proof and nothing counted as a good rumour unless it came from the milkman's wife's cousin on the Christchurch trams. There was sympathy for the advertiser in The Forty-Niner who announced simply 'Wanted—the Dinkum Oil.' As a morale builder mail was head and shoulders above all else. The most vituperative bellows of a sergeant-major produced a negligible effect compared with the mild announcement at any hour of the day or night that 'mail's in.' It should also be noted that the correspondents to the newspapers who declare that most of the contents of parcels are thrown away could certainly not have been on Treasury. Food was never so plentiful or varied that anything in a parcel was ever thrown away unless it had gone very bad indeed on the journey.