THE REINFORCEMENTS

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 63, 7 December 1917, Page 6

THE REINFORCEMENTS

ANOTHER DRAFT DROPPED

POSTPONEMENT FOR MARRIED MEN

Defence Headquarters announced yesterday that in consequence of the reduction of the reinforcement quotas and the rearrangement of the recruits already in hand it would not he necessary to send any draft into camp in January. The next reinforcement, the Thirty-sixth, will be mobilised early in February, and the subsequent reinforcements will be set back a month accordingly. The change means that the Thirtyseventh Reinforcements will go into camp in March, the Thirty-eighth Reinforcements early'in April, and the Thirty-ninth Reinforcements at tho beginning of May. Tlie first batch of married men, from among the Class A reservists drawn in the twelfth ballot, will now enter camp in April instead of March. Those men will thus have had live months' notice. Many of the men from the twelfth ballot will not reach camp before May. The Thirty-sixth Beinforcements, dne. to enter eainp early in February, will comprise the March draft. All First Division men now under orders for the Thirty-eighth Reinforcements, formerly due to mobilise in March, will be transferred to the Thirty-seventh Reinforcements, so that the date of their call to camp will not be changed. Married men only will bo set back till April.

It seems certain now that tlie Class A men, with accretions from the First Division and with drafts from the CI Camp, will cover the five reinforcements due to enter camp between April 2 and July 27 of next year. There may he another break in the drafts then owing to the use of the officers and men of the Fourth Brigade for reinforcing the division. The Class B men (one child) will hardly begin to enter camp before September, as the Minister of Defence has indicated already, and there seems no probability that Class C men (two children) will be mobilised More the beginning of 1919. Calculations are dependent necessarily on the rate of wastage at the front.