You Needed Three men to Move It

Heroes Remember

You Needed Three men to Move It

Transcript

Well the state of, before I got into the Grenadiers, the training I got with the Winnipeg Rifles was good training and it was different equipment. It was mostly, well we were a machine gun battalion or in, like that (inaudible) the machine gun battalion the 3rd Division that’s the training we had. But when we got to Hong Kong we didn’t have no Brens were no good so all we got was the Lewis and we didn’t get them until we got out in the field. But then with them too we had to, nobody knew anything about the Lewis gun. We had to learn how to use them, by doing it ourselves. The Vickers, it was a good gun too but it was you need three men to move it to suit you. And with the type of war that’s going on, you didn’t have that time. You see, the Japs were very good with those mortars you know. They didn’t miss many, and when you shot a couple of bursts of a machine gun from one location, you had to move in about five minutes or else there would be a mortar dropping down. In that sense, the Lewis was a lot better then the Vickers.

Description

Mr. Peters compares the three types of machine guns used by the Winnipeg Grenadiers in Hong Kong.

Abraham Peters

Abe Peters, one of six children, was born in Lowe Farm, Manitoba, on November 12, 1919. His father was a farmer. Mr. Peters worked on the family farm, and was entrusted with the care of the horses. He left school after completing Grade eight to become a farm labourer. His parents were very upset to learn that he had enlisted in the Royal Winnipeg Rifles in June, 1940. Mr. Peters took basic training at Shiloh, Manitoba and Debert, Nova Scotia. He was ill in hospital when the Rifles shipped overseas to Europe, and once healthy, was sent to reinforce the Winnipeg Grenadiers, with whom he was sent to Hong Kong. As with other survivors of the Hong Kong theatre, Mr. Peters experienced poor training, inferior weaponry, capitulation and a life of misery in the Japanese POW and labour camps. He agrees with many of his comrades that it was a hopeless deployment.

Meta Data