BATTLE SCHOOLS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 86, Issue 111, 15 May 1942, Page 6

BATTLE SCHOOLS

TEACHING COMMANDOS BRITISH INSTRUCTOR. London, April 26. Instructors plastering troops with animal blood, loud-speakers roaring out hate slogans, and a picture gallery of German atrocities are features of General Paget's battle training schools, in which infantry officers and n.c.o’s are taught to think and act like commandos. Correspondents visited a typical school in South-East England, where a 21-year-old lieutenant-colonel —the youngest in the British Army—is headmaster. Attack and speed is the school’s motto. Every exercise is carried out with live ammunition and every movement at the double. A leader is chosen lor each section in the school regardless of rank; he may be a major or a sergeant; the only test is leadership under battle conditions. Tin-hatted correspondents were taken in so close to the exercises that they were sprayed with chunks of earth from exploding bombs. The commanding officer, cutting “red tape," asked a local R.A.F. station commander for co-operation, and Spitfires power-dived within 20ft. of the correspondents’ heads while elec-trically-controlled bombs exploded a few yards away. They watched one section cover assault ' courses a mile long in 20 minutes. ’Troops with their rifles loaded crawled under barbed wire through which machine-gun bullets were whizzing within inches of their heads. Troops plunged and charged through a stream ol blazing tar and bullets from enemy crossfire. Then a section went on to the attack and wiped out the hidden enemy. A "haunted house,” with hidden traps and figures springing out of the walls, forms part of the course. Instructors yell through loud-speakers, “On your toes, remember Hongkong! Remember Dunkirk! There's a Hun. Kill the swine!” Loud-speakers also broi.'.-ast a sound track of a German horror film. The <■ —<e lasts a fortnight and on the last day during a 24-hour exercise the trainees live on a slice of bread and a little water.