TACTICAL TRAINING

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 87, Issue 66, 20 March 1943, Page 4

TACTICAL TRAINING

ARMY SCHOOL IN WANGANUI EXTREMELY SATISFACTORY RESULT'S Designed to provide instruction for senior subalterns and officers of higher ranks in the organisation, training, and tactical handling ot units of the New Zealand home defence forces for operation in the Dominion, the New Zealand Tactical School in Wanganui has developed into a high-ly-important units in the general scheme of military training. Already five courses have been he id and the sixth is in progress. In all cases the results have been extremely satistacLory, say the military authorities.

The commandant of the school is Lieut.-Colonel S. M. Satterthwaite, N.Z.S.C., a member of the 2nd. N.Z.E. and under him is a staff of six officers (Major W. L. Rutherford, Major J. Clachan, Major M. de R. Petrie, Major G. Maclean, Major G. A. T. Rhodes, and Major A. Pyatt), representing the various branches of instruction. Like him, they have all seen service abroad in the present war. The school adjutant is Captain F. U. Booth. Each course accommodates 50 students, drawn from various units throughout the country, and including a proportion of Home Guard company commanders, and instruction follows the most modern and practical lines. The qualifying course for unit seconds-in-command lasts seven weeks, and that for company commanders four weeks, and in those periods an intense and well-planned schedule of instruction is followed. Lectures, discussions, indoor and field exercises, and visits to the various army schools occupy the students, who, without exception, show the greatest enthusiasm for their work.

Their enthusiasm, in fact, is carried to the point of using bicycles to travel to and from their field manoeuvres, the idea being to save petrol and tyres. Each student is issued with a cycle when he arrives, and if he doesn't happen to know how to ride he has to take time off to learn.