Volunteer Items

Feilding Star, Volume XIII, Issue 54, 3 November 1891, Page 2

Volunteer Items

* ' The Manchester Rifles will parade on Thursday next for drill. If the weather is .fine, the men will be ~. exorcised in the Corporation paddock. Lieut. Kirton will retire from the Manchester Rifles at the end of the year. > The Scotchman of August 25 says : — The new infantry drill boot which the War Office authorities have.prepared, and which will be issued probably within the next five or Bix weeks, for the edification of Yolunteora aa well as the regular array, is to a very great extent 'based upon thtolines propounded years ago by Brigadier-GeneraLMacdonald, .'of th,e" Forth- Volunteer Infantry" Brigade. To the old school of Army officers, who have all along, tabooed the right hon gentleman's progressiye^ views, its publication, it is stated, will'eome aa a severe shock. The gigantic strides in point of accuracy upon which* science has moulded the new - weapons oi destruction demand that the days 'of "close order "'(as des. cribedby such progressists as Lordy Wolseley and Brigadier- General Mac-^.» donald as " brick wall formation ") and' mathematical movements are over. The section — the fourth part of a company— and not the, company will be the unit of "the future.',' la' marching, a space of 30 inches is to be allowed each man in the" ranks, as .compared with the huddling together 'at present; A" distance of ■ two paces will intervene at all , times between the "front and rear ranks'/ a regiment is in: line, - distinct intervals are to be observed between the several sections forming a company, as well as -well as,- between the - several companies comprising., 'the *-| Battalion. Some extraordinary, 'musketry regulations are spoken, of.