WHAT A RECRUIT THINKS OF MODERN MILITARY TRAINING

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 28, 5 January 1940, Page 3

WHAT A RECRUIT THINKS OF MODERN MILITARY TRAINING

ERE aye some extracts from the H letter of a young recruit to his father. It was written from Narrow Neck on December to "I am happily and comfortably established in camp after one week’s adjustment to discipline, routine, different surroundings, etc. We are camped on a narrow neck of land about 100 yards from a glorious beach, facing Rangitoto. It is a healthy spot, warm, sunny, and always a fresh soft breeze from the sea. We are temporarily housed in a marquee, with electric light laid on. We sleep on comfortable bunks and mattresses, and have really luxurious bath and shower rooms. We are surprisingly well fed for a military camp — we get brown bread, lettuce, a fresh apple or pear daily, fish on Fridays, in addition to the basic military bread and butter, meat and cheese. "The training is very rigorous. The day is divided into several periods —

small arms and machine-gun training, squad drill, bayonet drill, field tactics and physical training. Physical training is a different thing nowadays. Formerly we dressed in ‘longs’ and did boring, silly drill for perhaps an hour. Now we go out in shorts, bathing trunks, underpants — anything — but we must expose a maximum surface to the sun and air — and do a series of loosening and relaxing and speeding-up exercises. Next morning it is really delightful to wake up. Everyone leaps out of bed and laughs and talks and sings and whistles with great liveliness, just like a little boy. There is none of that sombre silence, bad liver, snarling and bickering before breakfast which I seem to remember. "The officers and instructors are an exceptionally fine-seeming lot. They enforce a strict discipline, but it’ is not half so rigid or ridiculous as it used to be. Much scope is allowed for individuality in all things." _ ~--