No Protection

We didn’t have no weapons to train with. The rifles that we were issued was old Enfield rifles and they had a red band painted around the muzzle. Some of them you couldn’t even open the bolt on them. The only thing any good on them was the bayonet. Well we did get hold of some . . . the British did have some machine guns there and we had to take them by force from the British. They were in their stores and we had to go in and take them by force in order to get them. We got some Vickers, Bren and Thompson. There was Thompson sub-machines guns. Bren, Vickers and Lewis and then after we moved onto the island, we were on one end of the island, the British was on the other end. We had two inch trench mortars, they had three inch trench mortars. We had their ammunition and they had ours. It was definitely confused. The pill boxes . . . two shells from a 303 British rifle would punch a hole through them. They were built by a German contractor. We had no protection!