BRITISH ARMY TRAINING

Greymouth Evening Star, 21 January 1941, Page 8

BRITISH ARMY TRAINING

OFFICER’S .DESCRIPTION. [BRITISH OFFICIAL WIRELESS.] RUGBY, January 19. In a broadcast to-night, a young officer, who himself is in training, described how the British Army is undergoing. training in what it would be true to call “aggressive action.” He said this training meant the acquiring of rigid parade ground disciplined bodies and, the learning of self-dis-cipline and self-reliance, which was the basis of courage and offensive spirit. He described hovz these troops were proving to themselves how they could do more than their bodies admitted. They marched 25 miles in six or seven hours with a full load, and immediately followed it .with another 14 or 20 miles, finishing with a quarter pi an hour’s small-arms drill.. They tried to go across the country like a trained hunter, learned to climb or jump off anything up to a 20-feet wall, go for long periods without food or sleep, and not notice wet or cold, cuts or bruises. “There is no way out of anything we set ourselves to do except its completion,” he said. “It is our promise to you, to our mothers, wives, and sisters, who are being bombed in the big cities. To the Wren churches, wrecked hospitals, and inoffensive little homes, which are now heaps of rubble, it is our promise of retribution.” i