Memories of Service 1 - Les Hughes

We could drop shells 25 yards ahead of the front line, our troops. And it was amazing, seeing that the British and Canadians were regular force chaps, we were all volunteers just off the street. And we could shoot as accurately, if not better, than some of the regular force troops.

– Les Hughes

When we were first moving up to the front line, we saw this girl tied up in the middle of a rice field on a stake, and a British soldier went across to fix her up and he got both legs blown off. They’d mined all round her.

– Les Hughes

(At Kapyong) on the 22nd of April the Chinese put in a vicious attack, thousands of them. All told at Kapyong our regiment of 24 guns put through one thousand shells. It was a non-stop fight from the 22nd right through and we stopped them on the 25th of April, ANZAC day with the Aussies.

– Les Hughes

We came to this big American dump … and in the dump were tyres and petrol, but there were a whole lot of cartons of Hershey’s chocolates and tins of orange juice. So we spotted this and the whole lot of us stopped. Typical Kiwis. And of course as you’re going along your gun barrels are sticking up. So we loaded the gun barrels up with these tins of fruit juice.

– Les Hughes