Description
Mr. McAuley talks about his first duty, that of guarding German prisoners.
William Archibald McAuley
William Archibald McAuley was born on February 4th,1921 in McAuley, Manitoba. He worked on the farm while going to school. After graduating, he worked at a neighbors farm for seven dollars and fifty cents a month until he joined the army on September 17th,1939 when he was eighteen years old.
Transcript
We were at that time Winnipeg Grenadiers Machine Gun Regiment. We had trained for Vickers machine gun and we had, of course, we had infantry training to a minimum, eh, not enough to, I guess, to qualify as being a soldier but our prime training was in Vickers machine guns. We trained until 1941, I guess, no 39, 40 we went to Jamaica, we went to Jamaica, we went down there and we had 2,000 German prisoners of war in Jamaica. They were the most arrogant people in the world, defiant. They'd run a swastika flag up every morning,. We had a guy by the name of Murray, we used to call him Wahoo Murray and he'd shoot the Swastika down. They'd run it up in day light and he'd shoot it down. If he was on guard he'd take his .303 and he'd shoot it down but they were very, very, very, very arrogant. I guess proud, ya know.