大象传媒

This story is taken from an interview with William Telford at the Ballymena Servicemen鈥檚 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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I trained with the Scottish commandoes. And I done 6 weeks training with them. And anything you didn鈥檛 know. And then I took part in the propaganda raid on the Lofoten islands in the Arctic Circle. Up in the Arctic Circle, up in the north. The Lofoten islands. They were manned by Norwegians, but it was German officers who were in charge. Well, our job was, my job was Field security. To search the [Japanese] officers, looking for information. And we had nothing against the Norwegians. But there was about 18 inches of snow on the roof of the factory. Well, the engineers mined all the supports and blew it up. And it was burning well. Whenever the ice fell on the fire it put it out.
Coming back to northern Scotland I reached over the side of the boat, took a mug of water and threw it up into the air. It came down ice.

[the only common language]
English- it didn鈥檛 matter where you went, you could always find someone who spoke English. It didn鈥檛 matter what country you went to.

The only Germans I come across were the elderly officers who were in charge of that Fish Oil factory.

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