QUICK TRAINING

Evening Star, Issue 23383, 28 September 1939, Page 12

QUICK TRAINING

BRITAIN'S MILITIA The objective in training Britain’s militiamen, according to a special correspondent of ‘The Times,’ is to make them specialists. Little, or no. attempt is being madd to train soldiers in the sense that the word “soldier” is commonly understood in England. The attempt to make the militiaman as like the regular as possible by subjecting him to as similar treatment as possible is not so apparent. The. correspondent,(described ; a visit to Colchester, where there were under training a body of militia divided among a field artillery regiment, an anti-tank regiment, the Ordnance Corps, and the Royal Engineers. The militiaman began to be a gunner or an engineer in his first week; there was no attempt to give him a soldierly outlook by disciplinary drill before making him a specialist soldier. The time factor has been very much in mind. In illustration of this the 7th Field Company, 11. E., finished all their drill in three weeks, and now, at the end of their fourth, have finished their musketry. The 27th Field Regiment. R.A., have learnt the fundamentals of map reading, all about their equipment, and the whole of their gun drill. The same is true of the 14th Anti-tank Regiment,'who prppose to take more than half of their men with them on maumuvres next month. In the two regiments it has been found that time spent on fundamentals may be cut still further, and it will be with the next entry of militiamen.

There is surely a moral to be drawn from this If the R.E. feel that they can discipline a man in three weeks the same period should suffice for the other branches of the service. The seven weeks’ programme being followed can be very drastically .pruned. What can be done here can be done at Aldershot The lesson is clear that, here the proportions of time devoted to different asipects have been more accurately' gauged. With the Ordnance Corps the outlook is a little different. Here the trend is to make the soldier before making the artificer, rather than the two at the same time. But the arms drill is being interspersed with lectures on the repair and construction of the rifle, showing an unconscious tendency to revise the programme laid down, to specialise at once, and to adopt the more liberal attitude of the 'R.E. Major-general C. E. Liardet, commander of the London (Infantry) Division, under training in Hants, spoke in highest praise of his men., pointing out that many of them with less than three months’ training were already superior to men in Kitchener’s Army after twice the length of training. These men were not wasting time on parades so much as becoming efficient in weapon handling and soldiering generally.