CALL ON OLD MEN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 July 1942, Page 4

CALL ON OLD MEN

IN FILLING 8.8. C. STAFF. With the increasing demands of the fighting services for men, the 8.8. C. is losing more and more of its staffmen young in years but old in experience, who have hitherto been strictly reserved. The corporation has therefore had to fill their place with men invalided out from the services, with older men from entirely other walks of life and with those that have been lent by the Dominions and the United States. All these, however senior their position will be, start their career with the 8.8. C. by going back to school in the Staff Training Course —an intensive course that lasts for three weeks and one that makes even the most senior pupils feel as if they were back in their teens again. At a recent session the piquant sight might have been seen of a general,- a full colonel, the managing director of a large firm of cotton exporters, and several others of similar age and standing, sitting on hard wooden benches industriously taking notes like any class of conscientious schoolboys expecting their examinations within the next week. To add flavoui' to the scene it may be added that their class room was that of a women’s college which had been taken over by the 8.8. C. when the war broke out.