CI RECRUITS

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 43, 14 November 1917, Page 4

CI RECRUITS

THE NOVEMBER DRAITT. The November quota of CI recruits will be mobilised next week. -The Canterbury draft will enter camp ou Tuesday, the Otago men on Wednesday, the Wellington nieu oil Thursday, and tlie Auckland men, on Friday, Tho total strength of the CI quota will be' about 550 men.. The recruits will be received Featherston Camp, and will be trausforred to 'inu. heresikau at once. Tho total number of CI men taken into camp for special training up to tho present time is nearly 1000. It is early yet to say what proportion of them will becomo fit for service with the ExpedU tionary Force. The training is progressive, and the full course may take several months. There is reason to believo that more than half of tho recruits, probably not less than GO per cent., will eventually be passed as fit. Tho men are very keen as a rule, and watch thoir own progress with as much concern as tho instructors display. , A big percentage of the CI men are volunteers who were rejected originally on account of.tho physical weaknesses that aro now being remedied. Thc6o men, as a class, aro smaller and lighter than a corresponding number of ordinary recruits for tho Expeditionary Forces. But their defects, in many instances, are little moro than the results of lack of physical training and systematic exercise under healthful conditions'in tin past, and the improvement under the camp regime is often astonishingly rapid. Weaknesses disappear, chest expansion increases, and muscles swell in a manner that makes linppy men of the recruits previously classed as incapable of carrying a rifle in the scrvico of tho Stato.