Recruiting Improves

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31118, 22 July 1966, Page 1

Recruiting Improves

(From Our Own Reporter)

WELLINGTON, July 21.

Improved response to recruiting contributed towards the Army being able to reduce the tour of duty for single soldiers in Vietnam by three months.

The director of army recruiting (Colonel H. L. Jones) said tonight that recruiting had improved in the first six months of 1966.

Enlistments in the regular army were 20 per cent higher than they were the year before when the response to recruiting was particularly disappointing.

The Army’s policy had always been directed towards the term of duty in Vietnam, he said, and the better response to recruiting had contributed towards making this possible. Many of the recruits for the V-force came from other units in the army, although there was “a steady trickle from the street" Colonel Jones said many of the volunteers for 161 Battery in Vietnam were members of the Ist Battalion, R.N.Z. Infantry Regiment in Malaya, who had completed their tour of duty. Some 30 infantrymen who had served in Malaya up to December, 1965, had re-en-gaged for service in Vietnam later this year. The improved manpower

position had given the Army greater flexibility in manning the battery, said Colonel Jones.