SKILLED TRADES

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 64, Issue 4562, 20 April 1942, Page 8

SKILLED TRADES

IN THE ARMY MECHANICS GO TO SCHOOL (J. Gifford Male) There are innumerable stories about the accountant who joins the army and ends up in the cook-house; and about the chef who ends up in the accounts . department. Personally, having had neither the time nor sufficient enthusiasm to check up, I’m inclined to dismiss them as fabrications of the professional funny man. Nowadays, the evidence persuades me, it is more often a matter of posting a man to the job best suited to him and making him a good deal more proficient in it.

Take what happens to a mechanic. If he is ambitious and keen to get on, it is usually his own fault if he does not get a chance to better himself in his trade. In the ordinary course of his day’s work in the Army he will be kept abreast of all the latest developments in engineering and what may be termed internal combustion mechanics. Then he may also be given an opportunity to take a special course in one of the Army’s several schools for mechanics. These courses are conducted for the Army by two large motor companies which have made available both instructors and accommodation for the classes. They are varied in length and in purpose. One will take a young recruit who may have had no previous experience or knowledge of the trade at all, and at the end of four months turn him out a mechanic. He may not be a master mechanic, of course; but he will have been given a pretty sound schooling In the rudiments, and there will be nothing to stop his going on and making himself a master mechanic.

Another Army School course is for the average Army transport mechanic, the man on whom falls the responsibility of keeping trucks movSig and of repairing them when they stop. It is an intensive course, lasting just 14 days. There’s no time for practical work. Its purpose, very simply, is to help a mechanic diagnose trouble, locate its source, and make a repair—all as snappily and expeditiously as possible. Yet another course—lasting eight weeks, this one—takes a soldier who has had some experience “ in the trade ” and passes him out as a Sergeant Instructor or a Sergeant in charge of a repair depot. This course is a new one, and recently I had the opportunity of watching the inaugural class of work—thank's, I should add, to the courtesy of an instructor who gladly explained the ABC of mechanics to an obviously ignorant layman and to the good humour of the class, which didn’t object in the least to being interrogated and inspected. When I made its acquaintance the class was divided into teams of five

men, and was probing into the inward parts of the back axles of several big Army trucks. “ This is a day for practical work,” the instructor said. “We alternate theory and practice. One day we given ’em the theory of back axles, and the next we make ’em pull back axles to pieces, overhaul them, and put them together again.” It’s like that from the very first day the class starts. The men are introduced first to the instructors who will drill the theory into them and then to the trucks and the universal carrier on which they will put that theory to work. The trucks are standard Army trucks which have come in for overhaul in the ordinary course of events. Usually their condition is the best evidence of the hard work they are called on to do.

The first day, then, comes the theory of pulling down an engine; also of grinding in valves, re-boring, checking big ends, adjusting for wear and tear, and so on. Then, under the keen eyes of the instructors, the class is let loose on the trucks, to put into application all they have learned the previous day; and so it goes on with gear-box. chassis components, carburetor, back axle, and brake system. The care of batteries and the study of fuel and tyre problems are special departments, and the class listens to special lectures from battery, fuel, and tyre company experts. The highly scientific business of tuning un a truck engine for maximum efficiency and fuel economy is another department on its own, as is a strange-sounding subject which goes by the name of “ steering geometry.” “ Not many mechanics realise how important steering geometry is,” observed my instructor, severely. “We give them a good grounding in it here.” The universal carrier (which is commonly but, I understand, quite erroneously referred to as the Bren carrier) receives careful attention. The power unit is a standard one, but there are many fine points in the repair and maintenance of the steering system and the track. At the end of each day there is usually half an hour or so of documentary films, which are looked forward to as a relief from the intense work of the day, but which serve a valuable purpose all th® same. They are mainly instructional, though a programme I saw included the Quentin Reynolds film “ London Can Take It ” and a “ sports thrill.” The main item was an escorted tour of a great Canadian automobile plant with closeups of engine production and assembly line technique. Individually I found members of the class were enthusiastic about the course, even if it did mean eight weeks of pretty hard study and concentration, with no relief from ordinary camp duties. “ Very few of us ever have had a chance of taking a course like this in civilian life,’’ a Sergeant told me. In peace-time, he said, he had owned a garage of his own in a Wairarapa town, and, taking a long view, he felt he would return to civil life considerably better qualified than when he had left it.