CITY TERRITORIALS AND CADETS

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 302, 15 September 1921, Page 3

CITY TERRITORIALS AND CADETS

TO SHOOT AT POLHTLL GULLY IN FUTURE.

The Defence Department a short time ago arranged with the City Council for the acquisition of a strip of land along,a steep slope at Polhill Gully, and as a result of the transaction the vory great waste of time occasioned in the paj,t by the necessity for taking all the. Territorials and Senior Cadets in tho city to Trantham on two or three days in - a year will be avoided. Tho piece of land was needed for the formation of a new miniature rifle range capable of accommodating about eighty firers at / once. »

War experience has shown that for tho average man practice with the .303 rifle at miniature targets on a 30 yards range is quite as effective a training as practice at the longer ranges with larger targets. The local defence authorities therefore intend to use the new 80-target miniature range in conjunction with the old miniature 25-targot range at Polhill Gully for the- training in musketry of some 1700 Territorials and nn equal number of Senior Cadets. Sending these trainees to Trentham, which has been the only place in the vicinity of Wellington capable of accommodating them, has always Iren fairly expensive, and has wasted fifty per cent, of each wholedny parade upon travelling. Moreover, the lost tim? has made it. impossible to impart such thorough instruction as might have been given if a city range had been available. About ten per cent, of the men trained would repay higher musketry instruction at Trcnthnm, and arrangements will no doubt bo made to send them out there; the remainder, it is considered, can he efficiently trained on the Polhill Tangos.