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Camp Police

All day long and until last thing at night a corporal and two lance-corporals of the Camp Police are on duty at the main Camp gates. The hours observed by them are two hours on and four hours off, and the two who are off rest in a tent near at hand, unless an occasion arises which demands their presence to assist their comrade who is on duty, in checking passes or in keeping undesirables out of the Camp.

These men of the Camp Police are familiar figures at the Camp gates, and the civilian mind is prone to regard them solely as the guardians of the gate. But the Camp Police have many duties to perform—duties which require tact and a show of strength and size. Recruits to this force are drawn from the Reinforcements in camp by the Camp Provo'-Sergeant-Major, who is in charge of the police. They must be from 5ft. 9in to 6ft in height, weigh 12st and upwards, and belong to the Second Division under the Military Service Act. They do all the despatch work, as well as acting as guards and patrols in the Camp and on the neighbouring roads. The reservoir from which the Camp water-supply is drawn is in a gully in the hills behind the Camp, and more than a mile distant. Night and day three members of the Camp Police Force guard the reservoir, the guard being changed once in every 24 hours. Two mounted men patrol the roads between Upper Hutt and the Camp during the day, to look for stragglers, while in the evening there are four or five police on duty at the hotels at Trentham and Upper Hutt between 7 o'clock and midnight. The railway stations at Heretaunga and Trentham are also places where the big white-belted men are on duty all day.

The Camp hot-water shower-baths are open between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m. There are police on duty there all the time, and when the baths are busy, which is between 6 and 9 o'clock in the evening, policemen in the loft of the building regulate the supply of water to the showers below. Referring to this duty, the Camp Standing Orders read:—

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"The Camp Military Police will control the water-supply, which will be turned on for a period of 45 seconds; there will be a pause of 60 seconds for soaping, after which the water will be again turned on for 60 seconds."

So that the Camp Police have an important duty here, too.

When Orderly Room is held in the Commandant's office at 8.30 every morning, defaulters are escorted thither by the Camp Police, who are also in charge of all men in detention. During the day a sergeant of police calls the defaulters' roll at various stated times, when the men who are confined to barracks are summoned by a bugle sounding "Defaulters."

To all parts of New Zealand the Camp Police provide escorts for prisoners, and on every troop train there are three of them under an n.c.o. of police, while civilian trains also are subjects of their attention. And even this does not close the list of the duties of the Camp Police, for they are the fire brigade of the Camp. They undergo regular training in fire-fighting with a manual engine which pumps the water from huge underground cisterns situated in various parts of the Camp. In the big fire which broke out in the Camp a year ago the Camp Police achieved wonders with their manual engine, which was worked, in the later stages of the fight with the flames, by crews from the Reinforcements in Camp, the firemen working the nozzles like trained fire-fighters, as indeed they are.

This was the force which Mick Laney had joined and in which he found good comradeship among the athletic men composing it. And in leisure time he entered into the spirit of the impromptu boxing and wrestling matches which went on in the long police hut when the men were off duty. They were all seasoned men, he found, and tough and agile; even the corporal who weighed 19st. was an athlete. And he learned, very soon, that the handling of obstreperous men was accomplished by tact and a show of strength more than by the application of muscular force.