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Description
Mr. Billson describes being placed in charge of a Bren gun, a weapon he had never handled. His unit is sent to protect a pillbox at Tai Tam Gap without being issued any ammunition. When the ammo arrives, it isn't Bren cartridges, it is hand grenades. Eventually a few cartridges arrive.
Transcription
We were assigned to different places and the first thing, I was handed a Bren Gun. I hadn’t handled a Bren Gun in my life. And I was handed a Bren Gun and four privates, I was then put up to corporal and I got put in a pillbox up in Tai Tam Gap and we got up there and we had no ammunition. We had these, we had four Bren Guns mounted; we didn't have any ammunition. So when I asked for ammunition they said, oh yes, we’ll give you ammunition, sure all kinds of it. Fine. And a truck came along with all these boxes on it, brought them into the pill box, stacked them up and I had to sign a paper that I had received ammunition in the form of 1,600 hand grenades. Now this was the first part of it. So we said, “We didn’t want those.” “Well, we’re not taking them back. You got ‘em, keep ‘em!” And we were in the, oh probably 10 or 12 days in the pillbox there. We did get some small quantities of ammunition after a while.