We Didn’t Have any Tanks . . . Nothing!

Heroes Remember

We Didn’t Have any Tanks . . . Nothing!

Transcript

All we had was foot drill, and it was so hot, from eleven o’clock to three o’clock nobody worked or nobody done nothing, it was too hot. But, we would do drill, okay, up and down, but that wasn’t training for fighting the war. You know, the fellows, the trucks and equipment, that carried the equipment was me and fellows like me carried everything on our back. And the funny part of it, when the war was on, we passed some garage with beautiful nice Ford trucks and Chevrolet trucks. And I said, "Let’s take some of them." “Oh my God, you can’t do that.” But the Japs did it, the Japs confiscated everything. We had Bren guns, but not too many. And there was sub-machine guns but it was, they were practically a suicide outfit because they had a drum. And if they weren’t loaded properly, they’d jam. You know what I mean. So, and a lot of the guys had those, not a lot, it was maybe a corporal or a sergeant had a machine gun. But if he was not trained on a machine gun, the minute he pulled the trigger, that went up in the air like that. You had to hold a Bren gun down. You had to hold it down to shoot, because the minute that you fired a machine gun like that, she’d go right up in the air. You have to hold it and you got to hold it down, because it fires a terrible lot of shells. But I never fired one myself because I wasn’t allowed to have a Bren gun. But I was on a, not a Bren gun, on a small machine gun, but I was on the Bren gun, but a fellow by the name of Trites, from Moncton, he was killed on the Bren gun with me, along side of me, and my brother. But that’s all the equipment we had. We didn’t have no tanks, we didn’t have nothing. Hand grenades, and we had mortars. But you know, it was those little two and half pound mortars that you strapped, or you could practically put it on your knee or you could put it on the ground. But then, I’ll tell you something about the ammunition. You couldn't carry too much of that ammunition. If you would’ve had a truck, but we were in the mountains all the time, we were in the mountains. We weren’t on the road, we didn’t have no equipment to go on the road. We had no trucks, or had nothing like that. The only truck that I remember was when we evacuated the front where the Japanese landed. We went down, me and a fellow by the name of Raymond Carrion, and this truck stopped and my, Major MacAuley and a couple more were in and they said, “Get in," they said, "we’re going to another place, farther on.” So we went farther on, but it was Chinese driving those trucks again. But it was trucks that they had rented or fixed up, I don’t know. But we had no equipment of our own, we had no trucks, or we had... If someone told you that, he was lying.

Description

Mr. Murphy discusses the inadequate training, weaponry and transportation experienced in Hong Kong

Leo Murphy

Leo Murphy was born September 3, 1919 in New Richmond, Quebec, where he grew up and completed his elementary education by 1931. He was one of nine children. Before enlistment he was a day labourer working in a sawmill, construction, excavation, farming, and a lumber camp. Mr. Murphy enlisted with the Royal Rifles on Nov 25, 1940, and took his basic training in Newfoundland and Val Cartier, Quebec. He was overseas for four years, spending all but the first three months as a POW in Hong Kong and Japan. The emotional impact of the Hong Kong deployment started early for Mr. Murphy, when on the same day his brother was killed beside him and he took the life of a Japanese soldier. During his captivity, he suffered from beri-beri, dysentry, pellagra, had his foot crushed in a mining accident, and developed liver problems. At the time of his liberation, he was a mining coal in Omini, Japan, as a slave labourer. Mr. Murphy arrived back in Canada in October, 1945 and was discharged February 5, 1946. From 1947 to 1960, he was employed as a brakeman with the Canadian National Railroad. Mr. Murphy was married on Sept 1, 1947, to Yvette Savoie. He died March 26, 2001.

Meta Data