>>/49878/
> Are they thrown into the meat grinder without the training?
Sort of like this.
At the beginning our protagonist and bunch of other people are forced by circumstances. Their space colony is being blown up to pieces and only escape avaiable is a military space ship. Due to casualties among professional soldiers some civilians decide to help and they stay as soldiers on the ship after the battle.
At the final battle, the chief commander of that other faction notices their soldiers doing poorly and their mechas moving rather slow and asks why is that. Some other officer explains that they're piloted by trainees but assures the commander that they've been fully trained and also are very patriotic.