Basic training?

Discussion in 'General' started by hutchie, Jan 2, 2014.

  1. hutchie

    hutchie Dont tell him Pike!!

    Would men who ended up in the same unit such as reme, rasc, ramc have gone through basic training together? Or would they all be fresh faces upon posting to the unit?
     
  2. DPas

    DPas Member

    When you say basic what do you mean? For example, as I understand it, after 6 weeks or so in a Primary Training Wing recruits were given various tests and interviewed and then assigned elsewhere.
     
  3. hutchie

    hutchie Dont tell him Pike!!

    Gotcha!

    I wasn't sure if units when enlisted went through training together before continuing on to become a unit
     
  4. DPas

    DPas Member

    I could not tell you if it was different for specialist trades but in Grandad's case it was to PTW and then they were sent off in separate directions. From other accounts this was the case for many of them. He went to an Infantry Training Centre. I do not know if he would have stayed with the people he trained with here because he then volunteered for Airborne and so was separated from the rest.
     
  5. Brian Smith

    Brian Smith Junior Member

    In my Dads case war diary records troops arriving from 10 Training Centre Cromer, 12 Training Centre Ekington and others from Guilford. Others arrived but from unrecorded locations.

    RASC so maybe from centres specialising in different training i.e.Cromer was 10 Driver Training Centre.

    Cheers Brian
     
  6. Tom Canning

    Tom Canning WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    `All new recruits after 1941 went into the General Service Corps for six weeks in order to make them fit - to learn to become soldiers - to march together - shoot a gun

    and throw a grenade - to keep themselves clean - and their uniform and equipment also clean and fit to be used - during this period they were tested to see where

    they would fit into the Army to cut out the square pegs in round holes etc - e.g. the famous M.P. Enoch Powell was found peeling spuds as a General asked a

    question to be answered in Greek as that is what Powell had been teaching at Cambridge - he was soon wafted away and became an Intelligence Officer to Monty at

    El Alamein and finished the war as a Brigadier General - the six weeks in the GSC would have spotted that error...

    Cheers
     
  7. Ron Goldstein

    Ron Goldstein WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

  8. Brigsy

    Brigsy Active Member

    Have puzzled over Dads training regime for some while now -:

    21/02/40 - Reported to No 3 Training Centre R.A.S.C. Margate (handwritten note on his papers say "No 8 squad, 128 Coy, Grand Hotel"
    22/02/40 to 17/03/40 - Not sure where he was or what he was doing, square bashing maybe?
    18/03/40 - 31/08/40 - Lived in digs in South London and attended daily "Fitting" classes at Paddington Technical Institute, occasional Saturday's but not Sundays. I know this because I have 2 exercise books detailing the daily classes that he attended.
    01/09/40 - 17/09/40 - Not sure where he was or what he was doing.
    18/09/40 - Posted from 11 Trg Battalion to 24 Res MT Coy at Swindon.

    There doesn't seem too much time in there for much basic training etc, only 3 weeks before Paddington and a couple of weeks after plus maybe some weekends in between. I would welcome any views on this plus any info anyone has on 3 Trg Centre Margate and 11 Trg Btn.

    David.
     
  9. Tom Canning

    Tom Canning WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    David

    Exactly why the training system was changed to make sense of it all - when Alanbrooke took over the CIGS job in Dec '41 - he made sure that the Army was

    run differently, and he changed lots of things and lo and behold, at Alum El Halpha under Monty - eight months later - we started to win the war…with the right people

    in the right jobs...

    Cheers
     
  10. Slipdigit

    Slipdigit Old Hickory Recon

    How did the Royal Navy train its recruits? Did they go to a shore-based training camp or did they find themselves on a ship facing OJT?
     
  11. Ron Goldstein

    Ron Goldstein WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Jeff

    Don't know anything about how the rankers were trained but I can offer a little about how the RN officers were trained.

    Early on in the war there was a large establishment known as HMS King Alfred stiuated on the sea front in Hove, Sussex. http://www.royalnavyresearcharchive.org.uk/King_Alfred_1.htm

    The town was full of marching RN officer cadets with their traditional white flashes on their collars

    It was there during my living in Hove in 1939/40 and later in early 1943 when my unit's guns were protecting the Hove front from marauding Luftwaffe fighter planes.

    Last year I spotted it once again as I did my "Return to Brighton" trip

    Ron
     
  12. Tom Canning

    Tom Canning WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Jeff

    there were many land based facilities for training purposes all over the country such as Portsmouth - Southampton - Plymouth - Davenport - Poole for the Marines - Rosyth and Dundee in Scotland

    and many more...

    Cheers
     

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