When a soldier joined the army in the 1930s he was issued with a record book in which his progress at various skills could be recorded so it could be seen how skilled he was, when his training had occurred and when he would need to re qualify. Different troops had different training requirements so a range of record books were produced depending on which corps or branch they were in, today we are looking at a 1930s example for soldiers in the Infantry or cavalry regiments:

The date on the front of the book shows this dates to 1938, so just before the outbreak of World War II. The inside cover shows this was issued to a private Garrett of Ladysmith Company, The Middlesex Regiment:

The book shows the basic rifle skills he would need to master and it can be seen here that he managed to pass all of these:

As well as recording his weapons proficiency, the book also has diagrams and instructions to refresh the soldier’s memory about his basic skills and posture, these cover using the rifle:

And the newly introduced Bren gun:

These books were used up until the outbreak of World War II, when the growing shortage of paper and the massive increase of recruits made them unsustainable and smaller, simpler documents were used instead.