Information on No 4 Mk 1* in NZ Service

[Peter Laidler]

I was hoping that you'd come in Woody. Jock was my boss at the Northern District Ord Depot when I had to give them brief tech details of the first GPMG's that had come into NZ. I'm sure that me and the other army blokes went to Burnham and re-kitted with the basics after being cleared at the CCS/admin after the Wahine thing. There will be variations in the NZ markings because they were put on at the various Ord Depots and at different times and according to a master list held at ??? I never understood why either, but there you go. Especially if you were serving in places like Korea or UN/Cyprus or Malaya with pooled Ord resources when your units got what they were issued with! In Malaya there was a mix of AD, AD/NZ, UB and UE and it all used to come from Johore Bahru, even the Malay Army stuff went through our workshops initially.

In respect of Clarkies Malay Army rifle, I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't a pooled Ordnance rifle that was issued out, left stuck in an RNZIR armoury somewhere in Malaya or Singapore (why use an L2 if you've got L4's to play with?) and when the whole control situation handed back to the Malay Army/Police, the NZ Army took back its allocation. Said several times but we had a VERY nice Ordnance Corps WO1 at 40 Base workshop and in the school holidays he would occasionally bring his 14 or 15 year old son into work, by arrangement, when we were range testing. He was very good and has probably fired more ammo and cleaned through more rifles, sub machine guns and Brens than every other civvy in the world!!!!!! His mum used to bring us young Aust/NZ and pommy Armourers (there's be about 4 of us) some fresh home made sarnies and orange juice. His mum was probably pulling her hair out at the state of his oily smelly clothes until we gave him some JG's (jungle greens) to change into. No ear boxes then of course so he's probably as deaf as a post now. Nice sister too called Christine. I took her out a few times and wrote to her when I was back '...up country' I wanted to go down and see her one weekend so........... That's another story for another day

Some NZ, Aust and UK ammo techs (you know Wayne Le Gros Woody) were in our accommodation to. They were clearing out/destroying the old Japanese ammo bunkers in Singapore and Penang and if I remember, lifting a submarine alongside the dock at Palau Brani where the RAASC/RCT DUKWS were based in order to get at the live torpedos on board

Do you think that we've gone off thread enough for today?