TRAINING CADRE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20602, 1 November 1941, Page 9

TRAINING CADRE

SPECIALIST SQUAD GROUP INSTRUCTION HOME GUARD PROJECT A big step forward in the training of the Home Guard in the Gisborne district will be taken when a project now in hand comes to fruition and specialist instructors are available to visit country centres in rotation. The essence of the project is that non-commissioned officers mainly chosen from centrally-situated units will be given courses of instruction to equip them as members of a training cadre. This cadre will be more or less permanent in personnel and character, and will superintend the instruction, in turn, of non-commis-sioned, officers and men of the various units in the Home Guard group. Transport is to be made available to convey the instructors to out-of-town parade centres, both in the country and on the East Coast. The cadre will furnish for each occasion a sufficient number of instructors to cover a substantial range of subjects. In effect, each centre will be given the benefit of the “bull-ring” type of training which has proved so efficient in mobilisation camps, the trainees moving from point to point and coming under different instructors in turn.

When it reaches working order, the new scheme will fill a long-felt want in Home Guard circles. One of the greatest handicaps the movement has suffered from has been a dearth c. highly-competent instructors who know their drill and—what is equally important —the sequence of instruction. The cadre will supplement the work of the permanent staf. instructors now available in al. groups, and will work in conjunction with the staff men. Some months ago it was suggested to the Army Department that Home Guard training could be much enhanced in value if groups o! instructors were formed into travelling “circuses” to visit the differeni areas outside the metropolitan districts. This suggestion was not viewed favourably, apparently, but the new cadre system should make a good substitute for the “circus” scheme.