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BASIC TRAINING
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ball rounds, on a single shot basis for the initial lesson followed by burst fire from the hip
(instinctive firing) at a range of 25 metres in the subsequent lesson. In officer cadet training,
range practices were used for ‘mutuals’, where trainees learnt to teach their peers according
to the official lessons plans. These included zeroing, which the reallocation of weapons in
‘A’ Company necessitated as well as field firing (standard range practice) and night ranges.
Commissioned officers supervised all ranges and were mandatory to be present when firing
was conducted.
X. BAYONET FIGHTING
XI. HAND GRENADES.
There was no controversy over bayonet fighting in the 1960s. One-on-one combat with the
enemy was seen as the end game in the assault and the defence, in the former to destroy the
will to fight and the latter, to deny the enemy his prize to the last man, if it came to that. It was
not really an issue of running out of ammunition but an expression of bitter resolve. It also
represented a measure of the willingness to take a life directly with one’s own hands face-to-
face, rather than as a distant disembodied activity with a long-range weapon. It sought to test
the soldier’s squeamishness about the dark truth of his profession, though of course peacetime
training would not even be a pale shadow of the wartime reality of sticking a blade into the
body of another human being and maybe even turning it.
Interestingly, the training was done entirely by NCOs. There were standing dummies made
of Hessian sandbags fixed on a frame, with other sandbags lying beside them on the ground.
After the demonstration, trainees queued up about 15 feet in front of each standing dummy.
As each trainee came to the head of his queue, he was ordered to fix bayonet as a drill. At the
order to attack, he would flick his rifle up from the ready position across his body to the attack
position, screech out a blood-curdling yell (or so he hoped) and rush headlong at the dummy,
bring his rifle back to execute a butt stroke on the dummy and thrust it forward straight armed,
so that the bayonet entered the centre of the dummy and pull it out. Then, the trainee was
required to turn to his right or left and stab the recumbent dummy twice, step on it to extricate
the bayonet and rush forward past the line of dummies. Enigmatically, they were also taught
that if the bayonet was stuck, they could fire a round to free it, raising the question of why not
shoot the enemy in the first place? Apart from discovering whether one had a blood-curdling
yell to offer, the exercise was mostly an anti-climax, compared to the theory. But, the NCO
instructors had a great time getting the under-performers to repeat the process while offering
rude observations about their manliness.
One would have assumed that those who had applied for training to be combat officers
would have been reconciled to the idea of the dangers of the profession, perhaps even
actively craving for them. The last thing to expect would have been that even the weapons