SOLDIERS IN SIX MONTHS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 148, 17 November 1914, Page 7

SOLDIERS IN SIX MONTHS.

TRAINING THE RECRUITS. Many people are wondering liow the British War Office proposes to turn out efficient infantry battalions for active service within six months. In normal times, the British soldier finishes his day's work with the mid-day meal. The new recruits are asked to work harder, and they are ready and eager to go through the scheme of training prepared by the military authorities. The new j army works, if not eight hours a day, certainly forty-eight hours a week. But | even under these conditions, the recruit j has to spend ten weeks before he is con- ' sidered advanced enough to take part I in any company exercises. Those ten weeks are very interesting. On the first day of his new life, the recruit spends four widely separated hours in squad drill {right turn, left turn, right about turn, and all the other evolutions that can be seen in any bar- | rack square). The object of spending so much time on this drill is that the response to orders may become automatic. The recruit has one-and-a-half hours at musketry, divided into two periods; he attends two lectures, has three-quarters of an hour's Swedish physical exercises, and spends half an hour in becoming accustomed to his marching order equipment. His second, third, fourth, and fifth days are very much the same. By the sixth day, the recruits muscles have begun to harden, and his squad movements, have become more automatic. His physical exercising and musketry are increased, and his squad drill is diminished. This progressive training goes on, eliminating the simple and introducing the more complex, until at the end of the sixth week, the younger soldier is doing six hour's Swedish brill each week, eighteen hours, mixed squad and skirmishing drill, twelve hours' musketry practice, four hours on outposts, four hours' route marching, and four hours' night operations. Another month passes, and other exercises are introduced. Bayonet fighting, entrenching, platoon drill and scouting come into the day's programme, while for a selected few machine gunnery and signalling take the place of tile old monotonous squad drill exercises. Foothall and cross-country running enter into the training scheme.