ARMOURED VEHICLES SCHOOL

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 256, 28 July 1942, Page 4

ARMOURED VEHICLES SCHOOL

Is Its Site Suitable?, TRAINING SAID TO BE HAMPERED Dominion Special Service. AUCKLAND, July 27. The sooner the New Zealand Armoured Fighting Vehicles School is shifted from its present location ithe better. Training time is being lost and instructors and. students are often subjected to impossible conditions because of the severity of the weather and the lack of action on the part of the authorities to ameliorate the lot of the men in this camp. t It is a pity that some of those who* have procrastinated in dealing with representations which must have been made from the camp cannot be required to spend a week or a fortnight there at the present time.

Work at the camp falls into two categories—indoor and outdoor. Both are suffering. Efficient though the school is, and there can be no doubt about its achievement, it, and through it the whole ot the Army which it serves, js being unnecessarily handi- > capped through want of action at Wellington. Typical of winter weather was that found at the camp a few days ago, There had been a heavy fall of snow the day before. Frost overnight caked drifts and transformed flat crusts into vast sheets,of ice. For some hours the parade grounds were too dangerous to be used. On the roads and paths men slithered and slipped. Hard falls were frequent. ' Stalactites on Tanks.

Stalactites hung from the undersides of tanks and other vehicles. Their tops were covered with snow. Expensive pellet ranges, imported to teach tank crews gunnery and thereby save track mileage, were not usable because of the snow which had drifted in under their only protection, shelter roofs without sides.

In these conditions men are expected to work, not by the officers of the camp, but by the authorities who established the school at the most unsuitable place in New Zealand. They apparently think that men, even if they do not wear the mittens, gloves ‘and old socks which most of them use, can start work first thing in the morning in classrooms which are so cold that minds as well as limbs become numb, and on vehicles so polar that skin is “burned” off fingers and palms. It is true that there is a very low rate of sickness among the men who have been sufficiently long at the camp to become acclimatized 1 , but surely it cannot be argued that this is the only measure which should be applied to the suitability of the site. The [measure which should be used is the assistance which the site gives or does not give to the purpose of the camp—and that is to -train men as quickly and as efficiently as possible in the use of armoured fighting vehicles. Its spaciousness and remoteness are its only redeeming features. / There is no need to ask officers or men—-for they are well aware of the official consequences of speaking “out of turn” to newspaper reporters—whether this camp helps or hinders their work. Evidence of unsuitability is everywhere to be seen on a winter morning. Men cannot work or learn efficiently when they are frozen to the bone or when the vehicles they have to test, repair or otherwise examine “burn” the skin off their hands. It would be imagined that not much money would have to be spent to put stoves in classrooms. They would have to be coal stoves or' fireplaces, for it appears that the power supply -to the camp is insufficient to provide both heat and light, but anything would be better than the present refrigerated conditions.

the camp has had added to it-a large number of amenities in -the way of canteens, theatre, and institute buildings, (but these only brighten the lot of the men after training hours. Their tents have also been replaced by huts, but even these do not always keep the snow out. There is only one way to enable the men to handle the tanks in comfort during the winter, and that is to shift the school to a warmer area of New Zealand. Perhaps this cannot be done because camp building has not yet reached the stage of paralleling existing mobilization, but it should be effected at the first possible moment. Meanwhile it is a hard and very cold fact that efficiency is being impaired for want of a few additions which should be capable of immediate provision.