All the above were carried out at the Battle Schools. Reasonable safety precautions were observed but there were still injuries and even a few fatalities among trainees. It was expected that training of this nature would cause casualties but the important question was what number was acceptable? Some officers pressed for a loosening of the safety regulations and in February 1942 the Home Forces lifted some restrictions on live firing in exercises. However, the politicians and the high command, understanding public sentiment, were unwilling to accept heavy losses during training on British soil.

Attention was also paid to preparing men for the non-kinetic shocks of war. There were lectures on battle psychology in which the physical and mental effects of fear were discussed and how best to cope with them. There was also a short-lived but controversial attempt to introduce so-called “hate training”, which meant that students were encouraged to develop a profound hatred of the enemy. This was vigorously promoted by Wigram who despised Germans in general and Nazis in particular (the fact he was Jewish probably had something to do with this). Students were given lectures on, and shown photographs of, German atrocities. Instructors would shout “Kill! Kill! Kill!” and “Hate! Hate! Hate!” during platoon attack exercises under live defending fire. Most bizarrely of all, in order to get soldiers acquainted with the gore of the battlefield, they would be splattered with animal blood during bayonet practice and escorted around local abattoirs. Some unfortunate trainees fainted or vomited. All of this caused a lot of unease in the War Office and in May 1942 hate training was brought to an end.

In spite of the Battle Schools’ efforts to eradicate carelessness in training, it is clear that indiscipline persisted in battle conditions. In ATM No.46 (October 1943), an article titled “Suspicious Alertness” recounted how a number of British soldiers in Sicily had been killed while sleeping away from their platoon. The author placed the blame on the poor quality of training, the problem being that “It is difficult to make the soldier realise on exercises the constant risk to which lack of alertness will expose him in war”. In notes prepared for a discussion on battle discipline at the Infantry School Conference in April 1944, the author, complaining that the average soldier was “amazingly lethargic”, listed a number of areas where battle discipline needed improvement, including digging in, degrees of alertness, concealment and dispersion. In previous articles I have discussed the poor intellectual abilities and low educational attainment of much of the army’s personnel so it is hardly surprising that the overall standard of junior NCOs was mediocre at best. Once again, the army was expecting too much from its men. Infantry Training promised that platoon and section leaders would be leaders who “…know all about the enemy methods and have trained themselves to expect them and to deal with them”. How this was to be achieved, when the vast majority of them had never been in battle and German methods were hardly ever discussed, was not explained.

We have now covered the major aspects of tactical training in the British and Canadian armies prior to D-Day. A few elements we have not yet considered, such as consolidation and observation training, will be discussed in future articles.