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Preface

WHEN New Zealand's first troops were sent abroad, to serve in the South African War, the fleetest transport was the horse and the strongest the bullock—an unequal combination in mobile operations.

In World War I motor transport was primitive and the horse still predominant. When World War II came along the Army hadn't any experience to speak of in what might be called motorised warfare, yet somehow the New Zealand Division seemed to fall quite naturally into a life on wheels. Nowhere was this more clearly shown than in the Army Service Corps, of which Supply Company was a part.

World War II contained something of everything: precipitate flight, dogged defence, confused manæuvre, swift pursuit. There were static periods, mobile periods, and there were times when, as a supply group, Supply Company hardly existed at all. The way in which it met each change of circumstance provides the student of supply and transport with profitable lessons, and should give the general reader, too, an insight into what is entailed in keeping an army in the field supplied with food.

Supply Company's history has its moments of glory, but it is largely a story of devotion, of behind-the-scenes work that was an indispensable part of every operation the Division ever did. It brought the Company plenty of adventure and excitement, and its fair share of hard work.

A great many people have helped in the compilation of this history, and my thanks are due to them all, both former members of the unit and members of the staff of the War History Branch. But particularly I must thank Messrs R. E. Rawle, J. R. Morris and W. G. Quirk, without whose willing backing the Company's story could not have been so fully told.

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