You Needed Three men to Move It

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. And we had to learn how to use them, by doing it ourselves. The Vickers, it was a good gun too it was a (inaudible) you need three men to move it. 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.