as hardly likely to have good results. To convert a rifleman
into a rifle-bomber in a week's training was of course out of the
question. Hitherto only the most expert and steadiest bombers had been
employed on rifle-grenade work. But now the ordinary infantry were
expected to become rifle-bombers, although their knowledge of bombs
was of the most elementary description. Two problems therefore faced
those responsible for the training and equipment of the rifle-bombers.
First how to get them even partially trained in the time, and second
to invent some apparatus for carrying the rifle-grenades. At first it
was only possible to train the N.C.O.s in charge of the rifle-bombing
sections--leaving them to instruct their sections as well as they
could.

It is hard to realise the complete inadequacy of this arrangement,
without knowing something of the rifle-grenade, and without knowing
the extraordinary difficulty of training a man to become an instructor
of others. However that was the best that could be made of the new
orders at the moment. And so it fell to me to take a class for a week
of N.C.O'.s drawn from the four battalions. I had not only to teach
them to fire the rifle-grenade themselves, of which they knew nothing,
but to teach them to hand their knowledge on to others.

The training went on from March 12 to 17, and thirty-four section
leaders attended the course. About 1150 rounds were fired. I did not
attempt any live firing--in fact, I have never thought it serves any
useful purpose to fire live rifle-grenades in practice.

It is of course much more dangerous than throwing a live hand-grenade,
and one accident in practice is enough to discourage all the recruits
who see it from firing live rifle-grenades in actual warfare. On the
other hand, even where the rifle-grenades are only used as dummies,
the waste of valuable ammunition is simply appalling. A Hales
rifle-grenade used to cost 25s. and it came down to 15s. a little
later, but once fired as a dummy it was not much use to fire again.
Dummies could have been made for about 1s. at the most, but of course
no one in England thought about a trifle like that; and so the
colossal waste went on all the time I had the training in hand. I did
what I could by straightening the rods to use the grenades again, but
I could not save much in this way. Thousands of pounds in
rifle-grenades must have been used where thousands of shillings should
have been spent.

At Warfu