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Old soldiers are rattling their sabres over the replacement of real rifles with wooden replicas for cadets parading at Anzac Day services.
The Defence Force is issuing the country's 4000 service cadets - aged 13 to 18 - with marine-ply "training aids" as it phases out their vintage blocked-barrel .303 rifles after generations of use in parade-ground drills and on ceremonial occasions. That means there will be no more real firearms on parade by cadets after this year's Anzac Day, although they will retain .22 rifles for shooting practice.
The move has been condemned as "a sham" by Dunedin Returned and Services Association president Fred Daniel, who told the Otago Daily Times it would ruin the Anzac Day tradition.
Otago retired soldier Ivan Nicholson feared people would laugh at wooden guns and regard them as toys. "It's a bloody insult - it's an insult to the people who died," he said.
Auckland District Returned Services Association president Gary Walker last night expressed disappointment at the move. He said it would "take the realism away" from sombre occasions honouring the country's war dead.
His criticism was not as cutting as the fighting talk from Otago, where the RSA fears the move will make the cadets look undignified and foolish.
But although Mr Walker said the Defence Force had the right to make policy changes, he believed it could have offered real replacement rifles after disabling their firing mechanisms to safeguard them in the hands of youngsters.
"We could quite likely make a submission to the Defence Force of our concerns and asking is there any way we can bring the realistic side back into it."
The wooden replacements are made to look similar to the military's standard issue Steyr rifles, and will come in the same green colour, but not the exact shape.
Northern region Cadet Corps co-ordinator Captain Trevor Sexton said the replicas would be about four times lighter than the old .303 rifles, at around 1kg, so would be much easier for youngsters to handle on parade grounds.
He added that the three armed services replaced .303s for drilling purposes more than 20 years ago, meaning he was one of the few people still able to train the cadets in how to handle them.
