RELEASE OF OFFICERS
OAMARU COMPLAINTS REPLY BY ARMY SPOKESMAN Complaints made at a meeting of the Oamaru branch of the Returned Services’ Association that experienced officers -had “received their marching orders in the most insulting manner possible,” were referred yesterday to Southern Military District Headquarters. An officer said that many officers, as well as non-commissioned officers and men, were being released from camp for service with the nonmobilised section of the territorial force, but that this had not, been done in an insulting way.
To release men for industry, the defence forces had been reorganised with a very much smaller number of officers mobilised. After it had been decided which officers had to be retained for mobilised cadres and other duties, instructions were given in the usual way that the others should be released for civil occupations. Those with jobs to go to were released as soon as possible, but it had been decided that the others should be retained in the meantime until the manpower officers could offer them suitable employment. There was no slur on the officers concerned in referring the matter to the manpower officers, who were in the position of knowing just what employment was offering.
The information that they were not to be retained with the mobilised portion of the forges was given in the ordinary military way and was not insulting. In the cases mentioned at Oamaru, the instructions were forwarded as usual to the Area Officer not as was stated at the meeting in the form of a “letter addressed to the whole office, read by all and sundry n-om the office boy upwards.” The Area Officer would adopt the usual methods of informing the officers concerned. It was not the Army’s custom ’ to write long and flowery letters when men were marched out of camps, the officer said. In any case, it would be impossible to send a personal letter to each of the very many officers who were being placed on the non-mobilised strength of the forces.
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Bibliographic details
Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23944, 11 May 1943, Page 4
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336RELEASE OF OFFICERS Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23944, 11 May 1943, Page 4
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