Description:New Zealand Rifle Brigade Physical and Bayonet Training staff and attached, Brocton Camp, Cannock Chase.
Physical and Bayonet Training must have struck fear into the hearts of the troops when their training programme was announced it for the day. Whilst at Brocton they were put through their paces, preparing them to leave and fill the places of comrades killed or wounded at the front. Other types of training they encountered on their eight week course included musketry, bombing, gas, rapid firing, Lewis gun, route marching, field training, educational, general and wiring (barbed wire entanglement construction and destruction). Brocton had an extensive battlefield built on the slopes of Sherbrook Valley where all the techniques could be practiced in the trench systems built to give fresh troops an idea of what they may face abroad. After the War these were generally filled in but the evidence of the layout has been discovered by the recent aerial survey using laser mapping.
Postcard photographed by Bassano.