Home Guard Physical Training

Manawatu Times, Volume 66, Issue 95, 22 April 1941, Page 4

Home Guard Physical Training

INSTRUCTORS READY The training of physical instructors for the Home Guard, which has been in the hands of the officers of the Physical Welfare Branch of the Department of Internal Affairs, has been in progress in Palmerston North during the past month. Representatives from every platoon in every unit of the Home Guard in Palmerston North and surrounding districts were chosen to train as physical instructors. These men, 68 in number, have been receiving instruction in the 1940 Army Physical Training Manual. A large number of them have carried out mutual instruction in the first part of the manual, and will be ready this week to carry out the physical training and recreational programme with their own units on their respective parade nights. The units whose representatives have completed the first part’ of their training are: North and Wouth Battalions, Linton, Opiki, Ashhurst, Tokomaru, Awahuri and Woodville. The men who have gone through their training have shown real aptitude for the work. They have found the programme particularly enjoyable and boneficial and are all showing signs of greater fitness. Under instructions issued from Home Guard Headquarters in Wellington, half an hour will be given up to physical training at each Home Guard parade. The men will be divided into various age groups for the purpose of this trining and under this arrangement no man will find the work too strenuous. In other Home Guard areas where units have already started their physical training, the men have shown real enthusiasm for the physical training period each week, and with the cold weather, there will no doubt be a keener demand for the training by all men, not only as a means of keeping warm, but also of getting really fit. Although the instructors will commence activities with their units this week the instructors’ class will carry on until the whole of the Training Manual has been covered. The instructors’ classes will meet as usual this week at the A. and P. Association buildings, Cuba Street, at 5.30 and 7.30 p.m.