March to follow soldiers' route

LIGHT RELIEF: Soldiers indulge in a snowball fight at Featherston Camp, July 1918. PHOTO/WAIRARAPA ARCHIVE

The footsteps of World War I soldiers, who took part in a training exercise marching over the Rimutaka Range, will be retraced by their descendants during a re-enactment march this month.

The march is taking place on Sunday September 27, and roads from Featherston to Kaitoke will be affected during the 21km walk, which will start at 3am and is expected to take nine hours.

NZTA has yet to sign off on a traffic management plan, but it is understood by the Times-Age that the Rimutaka Hill will remain open during the march, but drivers might face minor delays.

About 60,000 soldiers went through Featherston Military Training Camp from January 1916 to the war's end.

Of those, Neil Frances from Wairarapa Archive estimates between 30,000-35,000 infantry soldiers did the Rimutaka marches.

The army training infantry route was marched 10 or 15km at a time, to build up soldiers' endurance to long distances.

On those training exercises the soldiers would take gear equivalent to what they would have going into battle.

Soldiers would take the train from Trentham Camp, where they had received their basic army training, to Featherston, where they would spend two to four months completing advanced training.

It was decided that instead of returning by train to the Trentham Camp, which was the end location for many soldiers heading overseas to battle, the men were to march as an army exercise.

The march would be done over three days.

The training exercise ultimately saved the New Zealand Defence Department thousands of train fares.

Soldiers marched from Featherston Camp, over Rimutaka Hill Road and to Kaitoke, where they would construct shelter for the night, as if they were in the field.

The following morning they would trek to Upper Hutt, where they split into two groups, and played out a mock battle.

From Upper Hutt the soldiers marched to Trentham Camp, where they did their final preparations before embarking for war.

On each march over the Rimutaka Range, typically only five or six men, out of 1000-2000 soldiers, did not complete the trek, usually due to foot problems.

Soldiers endured the march through winter in 1916, but the army discontinued it during the winter months of 1917 and 1918.

While training in South Wairarapa, infantry often had an overnight bivouac included in such a march.