MILITARY SCHOOL

New Zealand Herald, Volume 79, Issue 24244, 9 April 1942, Page 8

MILITARY SCHOOL

SPECIALIST TRAINING WIDENING SCOPE OF WORK parties from most units The military schools of New Zealand, which are as vital in the army as are training colleges in the teaching pro fession, have cut a wide swathe since the war began. With the vast expansion of the Home Forces, which may have to go into action at short notice, increasing demands are being ma e upon them to-day not only in e matter of numbers but in scope or training. _ , , A visit to the Narrow Neck School or the Northern Military District, which is commanded by Major W. J- Smeeton, M.C., affords gratifying proof ot the efficient manner in which these demands are there being met. A small staff, which includes several officers who have had sound experience overseas in this war and who bring the enthusiasm and energy of youth to their task, is imparting to a large body of men, largely through the medium of short courses, knowledge which is taken back to Territorial and Home Guard units and when used to the best advantage is of inestimable benefit to their efficiency. Vigour and Receptivity Military training of to-day has a dynamic quality. The school has the men and the methods to apply it and probably the New Zealand home service soldier has never been so receptive as he is to-day. One reason is the definite menace to these shores through the entry of Japan into the war and her initial successes. Another doubtless is that units are fully mobilised and established at their battle stations. Thus they are a very different psychological proposition from the training standpoint than they were in former days when they had comparatively brief "camps" and thereafter maintained recruit depots. The next phase saw units with permanent cadres. Now they have built to establishment on these cadres and further they are brigaded. Thus divisions have come into being and the drive that commanders are able to put into the training has immediately visible support from the work of the schools. Nearly every Territorial and Home Guard unit regularly has there a group receiving some form of specialist training. Incidentally the combining of men of perhaps a dozen units for one course stimulates the effort of each individual who on the average feels that he must uphold the honour of his own unit.

Groups at Work One watched a party poring over air photographs of an area m which it had carried out a very interesting exercise the night before. Badges showed that the class was representative of the whole military district. The boar's head and the kea, for example, were on neighbouring hats, but they each stood for the honour and proud traditions of two widely separated units in the minds of the men who wore those hats and who obviously were on their mettle. No fewer than 55 different courses appear on the Narrow Neck syllabus for the period between March 7 to May 15. At the moment 13 are in hand. Those for selected men training for appointment to commissioned rank and for prospective instructors cover nine or ten weeks. The others last for one week o£ .two, the shorter ones being for Home Guard parties. The school ( has its various specialist wings—motor transport, signals, tactics, infantry training, and map-reading, physical and recreational training, weapon training, field works, guerilla warfare, medical, anti-aircraft artillery and the like. Diversified Character In the course of half an hour'p walk one may see a party being tauglit firstaid and stretcher-bearing, another firing the Bren gun or performing the exhilarating drill of the tommy-gun, another planning a guerilla action for the coming night, another driving Bren carriers or studying motor mechanics with the aid of an engine cut open to reveal its parts, another at desks performing a complete intelligence service based on an action that has been set in motion on a relief sand-table map or merely in the mind of the instructor, another learning field cooking using a more or less improvised kitchen plant constructed by themselves in the corner of a paddock. Such training is full of "punch." The varied interests of a day—each course may have eight or nine periods of diversified instruction in a day—and the stimulation of keen instructors working in deadly earnest, cultivate a buoyant atmosphere in which the men appear to be happy and mentally alert. Every means is employed to cultivate the aggressive spirit, to encourage initiative.

Home Guard Enthusiasm . The Home Guard, whose functions in war and general training activities are not widely understood by the public, hold an honoured place in the discriminating judgments of the school, whose officers have received very gratifying reports as to the manner Home Guard trainees have built upon and spread the knowledge they have gained in their brief courses. None more than the school personnel realises the value of this force. It should he added that nothing in this comment implies any reflection upon the keenness of territorials, who are the "regulars" of to-day. There is every indication that, since the full mobilisation of territorial units and the calling up of many men whose years are much above the average of the territorials of last year, the standard of application to instruction has greatly increased. However, the age factor is not everything, ■ as is proved by the fact that the instructional non-commis-sioned staff of the school now through necessity includes numbers of men whose age does not noifnally suggest the knowledge, power of command and stability they undoubtedly possess.