WASTING TIME

Evening Star, Issue 24331, 21 October 1942, Page 2

WASTING TIME

STUDENTS IN MILITARY GAMPS An interesting letter from a training college student who lias been in camp for over a year, which implied a certain amount of futility in his present activities, was before the monthly meeting of the Otago Education Hoard this morning. The letter read as follows “ Articles have recently appeared in the newspapers concerning the conditions of male training college students who have reached the age of 18 and are compelled to remain in military camps until they become 21 and are eligible for overseas service. It is rightly argued that an overdose of the military life renders the mind incapable of settling down to study seriously, that after two or three years passed in a state which encourages mental stagnation the young student has lost much of his interest in the profession which he had taken up. and that when he re-enters civil life he will not be of much use as a teacher. Therefore it would be in the public interest as well as in the students’ own if those who had completed their intensive training could be released from the Army until they were elegible for overseas service. “ No mention appears to have been made, however, of students like myself who are old enough to serve overseas but are compelled to remain in homo defence units on account of their medical grading. Had I been grade 1 I would by now have had my final leave and be about to do something real towards winning the war; but as it is I have been transferred to a camp where the principal occupation of our officers is devising ways for ,us > to fill in the time. We have a battalion parade and do ceremonial drill, which occupies an hour every morning; we go for route marches; we do fatigue work, erecting huts and pebling vegetables in the cookhouse; -and when we do any training it is always work wo have done a hundred times before and arc now heartily sick of.

‘‘ I have spent 13 ''months in camp ami am full}’ trained both as an infantryman and fls a stretcher-bearer, and when I do learn something new it is merely a new method of porting arms or about-turning, the whim of some sergeant or officer who has nothing more important to do.

r ‘ You can understand my feelings, sir. Here lam wasting time, confronted with the prospect of having to continue wasting time until the war either comes to an end or comes to New Zealand, while in the city beyond the camp gate I could be doing work both interesting and useful. (By doing so I would be losing no military training, and in the event of a national emergency I could report with all ray equipment to my unit in less than two hours. “ But evidently that cannot be. I must stay iu camp here until the war e». ds, or until the authorities decide that I could be of mere use elsewhere.”

The chairman (Mr J. Wallace) said the matter could he taken up with the authorities when the subject of training college students’ military obligations was discussed with tho authorities.