Army trains 50 recruits

Press, 12 April 1984, Page 12

Army trains 50 recruits

The first group of South Island young people to do their limited service volunteer training with the Army started training at Burnham Camp on Monday. Thirty young men and 20 young women aged between 17 and 18 are on the present course. They have just begun the four-week basic training phase which will be followed by 16 weeks of trade training.

The volunteers were all registered as unemployed before they agreed to volunteer for the course. It has a minimum qualification of two years post-primary education. After meeting Labour Department criteria, volunteers were put through the normal Regular Force recruiting test used by the Army, and were expected to reach the same standards. The course is the second to be run in the South Island. The first began several weeks ago at the Royal New Zealand Air Force base at Woodbourne. The volunteers at Burnham had a wide range of trades to choose from. They

included drivers, storemen, cooks, firemen, stewards, signwriters, panel beaters, receptionist, and hammer hands.

Cushla Flynn, aged 17, of Christchurch, has opted to Jearn more about fire-fight-ing. She left school in 1982 and has had several jobs since then. She has been on the dole since February. Brent Nicholson, aged 18, had been on the dole for four weeks before he joined the course. He left school in 1982 and worked for a year selling encyclopaedias, a job that brought him from his home in Auckland to Christchurch, before he gave up. “I have always wanted to be in the police or the Army,” he said. His love of art has prompted him to opt for the signwriting option in the trade-training section of the course.

Representatives of the police and the Ministry of Transport will visit the volunteers during their training to talk about topics such as drugs and the law, firearms, and road safety. This is the same sort of education

given to Regular Force trainees.

Like their Regular Force counterparts, the volunteers are living in barracks, the men 10 to a room and the women two to a room. While they are in camp they are paid $64 a week and do not pay board. The volunteers will be lectured in world affairs, take part in cross-country events, practise map reading and watermanship, learn about weapons safety (though not use of weapons), and first aid.

A number, at this early stage, have already expressed an interest in joining the Army as Regular Force soldiers on completion of the training, although they will have to make application in the usual way and begin their training from scratch again. The Army has accepted its new task in good grace but the impression that there are other things to be done surfaces from time to time.

“It is a task that has been put on us by the Govern-

ment. We have accepted the task and we are treating them as though they are more or less Regular Force recruits,” said LieutenantColonel I. J. Duthie, the camp commandant at Burnham.

“Undoubtedly there will be some spin-off to the Army,” he said.

The Burnham course is the first of two to be held at the camp, and one of six the Army has initially been given. The Air Force and Navy have to hold two each.