Gunfire is ringing out near the mouth of the Whanganui River as insurgents attempt to attack the Landguard Bluff army base.
“We’ve got an insurgency group,” explains Major Haedyn Jenkinson “which has made its way into Whanganui city where it’s established itself."
It’s a mock exercise, not a real military event, with 200 personnel and their commanders being trained in how to deal with situations like this.
One of them, Lance Corporal Jack Covell, has been in the army for seven years.
“The reason I joined,” he said, “is to deploy in the real world and do this sort of thing for real.”
Covell undertook seven stints working in MIQ facilities. He said at the start soldiers felt like they were doing “meaningful and worthwhile” job for the country, but then it began to drag on.
Across the Defence Forces in the last two years, the regular force has lost just under a third of its uniformed, trained personnel. Most of them have taken their skills to the private sector.
British and Australian Defence Forces are also battling retention problems often attributed to the cost of living crisis and search for better pay.
Australia has a head-start in its recruiting, picking up personnel from its successful gap year programme across the forces; a kind of voluntary national service.
While acknowledging our Aussie neighbours have a far bigger Defence budget to work with, retired army major, Tony Williams is in favour of a similar recruiting tool here.
“I’ve thought for a long time that New Zealand should have a Defence gap year programme," he said.
The former SAS officer has been in and out of the army since he was 15, with a variety of roles and deployments, retiring in 2019.
He’s seen Defence reviews come and go and nothing much change, but with personnel quitting en masse and mounting geo-political tensions, this one is crucial.
“I hope with this review,” he said, “they will not be afraid to make big changes.”
He believes for decades, the NZDF’s tasks and geographical scope has been too broad.
“We need to bring the focus down from the northern hemisphere going and helping these allies who in the end see it as a token effort anyway, and focus more in the South Pacific to keep them secure, well and prosperous.”
The need to tilt more to the Pacific has already been signalled by the Defence minister, building on a long relationship in the region around humanitarian and disaster relief and defence exchanges.
Among the Linton-based troops on the exercise in Whanganui this last week, there are soldiers from Tonga and Fiji, training to lead their respective Pacific platoons.
Williams, whose last job was training territorials, says in a major conflict New Zealand would now struggle to rustle up battalion numbers.
He thinks we should be developing small highly trained specialist units along the lines of the US SEALs.
“In the eyes of our allies we’d be seen as highly effective, and not just a paper division based on World War 2 theory and philosophy because that doesn’t work and people are leaving in droves.”
At the combat exercise in Whanganui, Lance Corporal Jack Covell reflects on his mates who have left the army recently.
“They tell me they do miss the camaraderie," he explains. “You won’t have friendships anywhere like you do here.”
In an attempt to hold on to personnel, the Government handed out $10,000 bonuses to some categories of Defence staff in two instalments, the next one due in June.
They also increased allowances in a total package worth nearly $60 million. The Government is now working on longer term retention measures.
For the soldiers involved in the Whanganui exercise, their next assignment will be to swap their combat kit for parade dress uniform in Anzac Day ceremonies.
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