IN CONFIDENCE
About 400 recruits are trained annually at the Depot, in a 32-week basic military course, and nearly twice as many trained soldiers are given shorter courses and NCO-type training. Skill-at-arms is the staple of the recruits' train- ing, although basic education in English, arithmetic etc. is also essential. The teacher: pupil ratio' for recruits is 1:14. In addition, about 300 children are taught at a Gurkha High School.
Later the Committee was briefed at HQ Gurkha Field Force by its Commander, Brigadier Morgan Llewellyn, on the operational role of the Field Force in Hong Kong. As well as tasks connected with internal security and the assistance of the civilian population in the event of floods, etc., the Gurkhas participate in the anti-II operations on the border with China. Something of the nature of the problem was apparent when the Committee toured the border fence, first in helicopters and then along the border road. The tall barbed wire fences are not in themselves a sufficient deterrent to IIs and there were sometimes pathetic stories of men and women scrambling bleeding over the fence and running the gauntlet of military patrols. Regular observation posts on the Chinese as well as the Hong Kong side are interspersed with smaller mobile units patrolling the border and ambushing IIs. With constant refinements being made barbed steel tape, a Fence Protection System, and underground sensors in prospect the number of IIs crossing the land border seems certain to be reduced to a trickle provided that the numbers attempting to cross remains similar.
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