In the 2nd World War there was about one man in twenty who went out to fight the Japanese. Well, not who went out to fight the Japanese, who were in formations I should say, that were fighting the Japanese who actually made contact with the Japanese, and they were the infantry men mainly.

There are three fighting branches in the Army. There is the infantry, the foot soldiers, they're the ones, the mugs, who get the worst casualties. The other thing I should have told you about it being a mugs game. They get the worst conditions, the worst bloody rates of pay. You'd think a fellow taking that chance would be the highest paid. You'd think they'd pay him higher than some clerk in some depot, but they don't. He gets the worst pay, proving again that he is the mug. There's no doubt about it. It's as though they're rubbing it into him, and saying you're the bleedin' idiot. They also get the worst food.

You have three fighting branches of the Army. The infantry they're the main bulk of them, (that is the fighting services,) not the bulk of the Army. The bulk of the Army is way back, miles back. Then you have the artillery, the big guns that fire from miles back, but that's not a cushy job because the enemy also tries to knock out you're big guns. So they have all that to put up with, and of course the enemy aircraft are always after the big guns. The third branch is what used to be called the cavalry. They used to fight on horseback years ago, even as late as the 1st World War, with lances. They used to go charging at the enemy's cavalry. It seems primitive now. Once the tank had been invented in the 1st World War, about 1916 that all changed. Gradually they got rid of the horses and the cavalrymen went into tanks and armoured cars.

All the rest of them are what are called supply troops. The blokes at the bases who look after your pay, the catering people, the ordnance people. The ordnance look after the ammunition, they man the ammunition dumps at the bases. They're responsible for getting the supplies up to the troops at the front. They didn't have a cushy job in battle, because of course the enemy is trying to knockout the ammunition dumps as well. They got a lot of raids, but compared to the infantry soldiers lot, it was pretty cushy. Then again compared to somebody at the base.

There were thousands and thousands of troops in the 2nd World War who never saw the enemy at all, and never got anywhere near the front, yet they're wearing medals today, and they have done since the war, simply because they were in that area. That's another farce. You couldn't look at a bloke and say he fought in Burma. He might never have seen Burma, because the area extended as far as Calcutta in India. The whole thing was a bleedin' mugs game They were looking for idiots and in my case they found one.

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