Rifle Clubs and Home Defence

Southland Times, Issue 24235, 19 September 1940, Page 6

Rifle Clubs and Home Defence

ACCORDING to a statement printed yesterday in The Southland Times, the Commander of the Home Guard is to confer shortly with the president of the New Zealand Rifle Association “about the formation of mobile defence units composed solely of rifle club members.” This announcement will be welcomed as an indication that the authorities are at last beginning to take a practical view of home defence. Their slowness to utilize the experience and special qualifications of local marksmen has been one of the less creditable features of the war effort. Members of the rifle clubs who are too old for active service have expressed their willingness to serve at home, either as instructors in musketry, or in semi-military units which could occupy defensive positions in an emergency. At the annual meeting of ' the Invercargill Defence Rifle Club last week, the president explained that he had approached the authorities when war was declared, but was informed that members who wished to take part in home defence or guard duty “could sign on in the ordinary way.” It may be true that in those early days of military organization there was small room, and perhaps small need, for- unorthodox methods of home defence. But more than a year has passed since then—a year of alarms and dangers when the changing world situation more than once raised the possibility that New Zealand might be left to rely on its own defences. Fortunately the long hesitancy is at an end. With the formation of the Home Guard many thousands of older men will now be able to feel that they have a place and a duty in the scheme of national preparedness. It is to be hoped, however, that the special qualifications of rifle club members will not be submerged in the ranks of untrained men. Marksmen who have learned to shoot under tricky conditions of light and weather are skilled in the finer points which are outside the normal military methods. They understand the kind of shooting required for sniping, and for the accurate fire which might be needed to offset a numerical weakness in a critical situation. They are, indeed,

the obvious instructors for members of the Home Guard, who can scarcely be expected to receive a full > military training, especially since the army instructors are wanted elsewhere. Such an adaptation of local experience would be satisfying, not merely to the riflemen themselves, but also to Home Guards who may feel that a rapid and adequate training with firearms is a far better preparation for service than can be found in a merely nominal introduction to military drill.