GUARDS OFFICERS CRITICISED

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 26987, 12 March 1953, Page 10

GUARDS OFFICERS CRITICISED

ARMY DEBATE IN COMMONS

LONDON, March 10. Captain E. W. Short (Labour), speaking with what he described as "some personal knowledge.” criticised the Brigade of Guards and its training depot at Caterham, Surrey, during the House of Commons debate on the Army Estimates. He said the depot was “one of the most inefficient and timewasting institutions—a supreme example of Blimpism.” He added: “It is a place where intelligent young men go in one end and come out the other as tailors’ dummies, converted into such by a system which is more stupid, more brutal than anything the Prussians had.

“The officer class in the Brigade of Guards is a ‘closed shop.’’ The officers come from a very small section of the community, and by and large it is the 1 least intelligent section. At the height of the Battle of Britain, recruits in the ; depot were not allowed to handle a rifle for four weeks until they had learned to slow march. “Quite recently a squad was backsquadded and had to do considerable training again because, in the passing out of the brigade one wretched soldier said the Duke of Wellington was a regimental lieutenant-colonel. (Laughter.) “Two hours daily are spent on shining. The men have to sit on their beds and shine, and if everything is shining they still have to shine. They are not allowed to speak. They are allowed to smoke a pipe, but not cigarettes.” “Uninformed Criticism” Mr Nigel Fisher (Conservative), who was a Welch Guards officer, said the Guards depot produced the bestdisciplined troops in the world, and the best fighting troops. “I’m rather fed up with the uninformed criticism which we hear of them. Anyone who fought alongside of. or as a member of a Guards unit in battle, knows well that the discipline which Captain Short has criticised produces qualities which have stood him and everyone else in good stead.” Mr Fisher added that sartorially the Army still felt itself a sort of Cinderella of the services. Soldiers loathed khaki battledress for walking out. They were not so fond of blue, but they adored scarlet. “A gay uniform does get the girls, and that’s what a young man wants to do.” Colonel Gomme Duncan (Conservative) recalled that before World War I in the Aidershot Garrison, girls used to pay soldiers to walk out with them—“two shillings for an evening with a Guardsman, half a crown for a Highlander.” The Under-Secretary of State for War (Mr J. A. H. Hutchison), replying. said it was not possible to have thoroughly good men and thoroughly bad officers. Those who said guardsmen were first-class fighting material could not in the same breath say their officers were bad.