The Sten Gun

Heroes Remember

The Sten Gun

Transcript

The enemy had much better weapons than what we had. All we had, had the, when it come to our small arms we had the rifle. Sten gun, which nobody wanted to take, is the ones that the pre- war, you know, that the undergrounds used over. The spring in the magazines no darn good and used to jam up the rounds. So the boys did not want to take a chance take one them going out on any patrols. And then you had the Bren gun. Bren gun was a nice weapon and very accurate. It was automatic and semi-automatic and that was what I was. I think they always picked the little guys to carry those bigger weapons. They could handle them a little better I think, you know, because being smaller than the bigger man. And of course then there was the pistols that the officers would have. We had our, what was it, 81mm mortars and at the end we ended up getting two, 4.2 American type mortars. Not like the English. The English had the smooth barrel like the 81mm mortars. And where the ones we got from the Americans, the two as a matter of fact, I was lucky enough to be back in support company then and worked with those. But they had the rifling just like your gun. But other than that now the tanks and we had recoilless rifles and the tanks. We were lucky in a way especially our platoon, we had a few other guys that had those American carbines too and of course if anybody came even any other platoon in the company to go on up and they wanted to borrow. We always lend it to them. We wouldn’t say no I’m sorry you can’t have it. We used to lend our... but we never had enough of them. In the whole company, probably we only had about, probably four. I think there was only two of us in our platoon that had them.

Description

Mr. Rees discusses the limitations of Canada’s weaponry during his tour.

Charlie Rees

Charles Rees was born in Lance Cove, Newfoundland on July 14, 1930. He first experienced the consequences of war at the age of 12, when he and the rest of his community were involved in rescuing the crew from two ships torpedoed nearby. While working in Toronto, Mr. Rees made the decision to enlist for service in the Korean War. He was sent overseas with the 1st Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment, where he served a one year tour of duty on the 38th Parallel. When he returned to Canada, he trained as a paratrooper. After leaving the service, he was a pressman in the printing trade. Mr. Rees joined both the Atlantic and Canadian Korean Veterans Associations.

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