Combined Operations training in Burma

This story is taken from an interview with William Telford at the Ballymena Servicemen’s Association, and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions. The interviewer was David Reid, and the transcription was by Bruce Logan.
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After the Battle of Mandalay, we had been in action from the 1st April to the 26th June. We were Combined Operations training, and the trawlers were manned with Royal Naval Reserve. Elderly men, they had these blue chokers, but they weren’t in uniforms. And they manned the Lewis guns that were in the trawlers. This elderly fellow had fallen down and dislocated his hip-bone. And we were waiting to land on something or other. The Petty Officer in charge of the trawler come and asked Mr Bunker, that was the officer in charge of us at the time, “Anybody here can handle a Lewis gun?”
Well, 90% of them couldn’t. I says “I can handle a Lewis gun”.
He says, “Where did you?”
I says “The RUC. I learned to handle a Lewis Gun”.
And the Petty Officer says “Come and show me, Corporal”.
I went up with him to the twin Lewis gun, and I says “What do you want me to do?” and he says “I want you to fire one of the guns”.
I says “which one do you want?”
He says “Fire the left-hand gun”.
And I fired 5 rounds from the left-hand gun, and he says “that’s all right”.
I reached up to lift the magazine off, and he says “That’ll do. You know that if you fired 5 rds out of the left-hand gun, and an aircraft came over and you had to fire twins, the right-hand gun would stop firing after it fired the first 5 rounds”. When he saw me check the magazine …
Well, anyway. The petty officer was pretty fond of me, and he said “Paddy, you look after them guns. And it’ll pay you in the long run if an aircraft comes over. I got the magazines and all, I used to take the cartridges out of the magazines. And Peehee the cook let me put the mags into the oven to let me dry them out. If you put dry rounds into a wet magazine, it jams. And this petty officer who was the armourer, he says “Paddy, I’m gonna peehee you. Can I claim that?”
“Claim what?”
“Where did you learn that?”
“In the RUC”
“I never thought of that.”
He claimed that, and it would get him promotion. He thought of it, it wasn’t me.

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