HOME GUARDSMEN IN COUNTRY

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23811, 3 December 1942, Page 6

HOME GUARDSMEN IN COUNTRY

LESS TRAINING WANTED IN BUSY SEASON

The Home Guard authorities are to be asked by the North Canterbury District Council of Primary Production to limit training in country districts to eight hours a month in January, February, and March. The council made this decision at its meeting yesterday after Mr H. J. Macartney had stated that Home Guardsmen in the district he represented considered that there should be only one parade a month up to the end of March. Mr Macartney said the Home Guardsmen in his district believed that after two years’ training in the Home Guard they should get one parade a month in the busy season. When the Home Guard was formed there was no trained territorial force and practically no army in New Zealand except reinforcements being trained for overseas. Farmers were up at 4.30 every morning in the busy season, and they usually had to do two or three hours’ work on Sundays before they went to parades and several hours after. Mr W. H. Nicholson said there was already provision for the exemption of any man who could establish that he was suffering hardship. His commanding officer had the authority to give him leave of absence up to three months.

Mr Macartney: The trouble with a lot of country Home Guards is that the officers are mostly 40-hour week men and they don’t have much consideration for the others.

Mr A. H. Spratt suggested that Mr Macartney might attain his objective if the council asked the Home Guard authorities to instruct local commanders that they must give men freedom from these duties during harvesting. The position was that in some districts men were getting off, but in another district the commanding officer told men to turn up and do their drill.