National Army Museum

Early Days

Hopuhopu camp just before lunchtime on that October day, the men tramped in, they were from all backgrounds, offices, orchards, farms, except that they wore their civvy clothes and all quite conscious of what was happening. They were to become the old men of a great fighting division, the standards were not too good, the cook houses were inconvenient and out dated. You had to line up for a wash in cold water, the whole camp had been patched up on the outbreak of war to hold a lot more than it was designed for.

There was a ready made reception committee of officers and NCO’s, who had already been out through a solid week by Regular Force Instructors and were now ready to pass on the process. After the Government’s announcement on 8th September that a Special Force was to be raised for service within or beyond New Zealand, volunteers from 21 to 35 years old, medically fit for service anywhere in the world. The Government wanted the pick of the young men of New Zealand, then they said we will train you for three months, and if you are not needed after that you can go home. A striking feature of the recruiting was the entire absence of excitement, but the offices were packed to the doors, men were queued up from 7am for the doors to open at 9am, two offices in the Northern Military District ran out of enrolment forms on the first day, the quota had exceeded 2200 men and nearly doubled by the end of the week. To quote the Herald, active service always had an appeal to the adventurous, but there were old soldiers, some with war service from 1914-1918 to there credit, some tried but could not pretend to look under 35, they did not get past the doors. Volunteers could choose their own branch of the service, many volunteered for the footsloggers, more than enough to fill up the Rifle Brigade which was to be the infantry of the Special Force and  more than enough to fill up 1 NZ Rifle Battalion, which later became 18 Battalion.

The men who volunteered in the first week were medically examined in the second and sent home to wait for their call into camp, new permanent camps, one at Papakura, south of Auckland and temporary camps till others were ready. There, on 27th September 160 Officers, NCO’s and the men of 1 Rifle Battalion, on 3rd October came the main body of the Battalion, 546 followed by another small party of 32 assembled. The backbone of the Battalion, the four rifle companies kept men from the same districts all together, unfortunately the weapons in those early days lay more on paper than in reality, apart from its rifles and bayonets, there were only eighteen Lewis guns, which served as machine guns and light anti-aircraft guns. The signallers had a few field telephones, signal flags, but no wireless sets.