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M5Clive

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About M5Clive

  • Birthday 01/17/1975

Personal Information

  • Location
    Suffolk - Home of The Mighty Eighth
  • Interests
    Playing the piano, a' la Les Dawson!
  • Homepage
    http://www.redballexpress.co.uk

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  1. I didn't know you'd been absent without leave old boy. I'll never forget your face in the back of that Dodge leading the Bolero convoy in 2007 when we left Parham Airfield - Didn't know where to point your telephoto lens next !
  2. You can tell the Mods are all on holiday
  3. I got down late Monday evening and bailed-out Thursday night after a great few days, but I think I peaked too early! I found the intense heat combine with the horrendous dust in Kitcheners (rutted & stubble) field just too much. A simple walk from the shower block back to base camp found you needing another shower by the time you got back there! But I must say, I found the showers at the entrance to Kitcheners Field first class, hot and excellent water pressure every time I used them. I went to use the loo's at Kitcheners Field mid-morning on Thursday and all the toilets in the cubicles were blocked and full up to overflowing. I just assumed that there was a blockage on the main exit pipe from the cabin which had made them back-up. Up until this point I had found them quite acceptable (considering the relentless pounding they were getting all day and night long). Like others have said on here, I really do wonder about the mentality and sanity of the cretin's that get a kick from doing this sort of thing. The poor sods who would have been forced to resolve the problem/blockage in that intense heat and dust for the benefit of everyone else on-site is probably more worthy of the Bart Vanderveen Trophy than most! Did I like the new site in preference to Beltring? Well, as a general rule none of us relish change and I most certainly didn't like the 'gobi desert' where we were camped on the top of Kitcheners. But know-doubt I'll go again when we've endured another winter as bad as last year to muddy the memory of the dust & heat of W&P 2013. It's no mean feat staging a show of that magnitude at a new venue and it took many years to per-fect the show at Beltring, so its going to take a few attempts to get the exact formula right.
  4. Just given my works van its annual 'hoover out' in preparation for its conversion to a camper van! See you good folks down there - I'll be the one with a short sleeve shirt that resembles a deck-chair! Thanks for all the pictures to date of the show build-up and vehicles amassing - Much enjoyed.
  5. Can you believe all this happened exactly five years ago? How time flies and to think that the Liberty Belle is little more than a pile of useless wreckage now. But, Don Brooks has vowed to rebuild her one day. Great memories and great reflections on a simply wonderful day and such a privilage to be a part of.
  6. Yes indeed, blue sky - Almost unheard of these days in England Nice picccy!
  7. I took my CCKW 353 Shop Van up to the event (all of 4 miles each way), with my 4 year old daughter crewing for me on the junctions in her car seat, ratchet-strapped into the open cab, with the roof off and the screen down - Absolute bliss. The bright summer sun (at last), leafy East Anglian back roads, the wind in your hair, gas in the tank and a little girl with the prettiest smile in the whole wide world and a valid tax disc - Life really doesn't get much better does it - And I mean that with absolute sincerity.
  8. This just made me laugh out loud............ Not forgetting of course Mark Heliop's Ward La France doing much the same on the A12 en-route to Suffolk.
  9. Fantastic work! Don't you just hate people with workshop facilities so amazing and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't see any crap lying around on the floor or workbenches - What a set-up! Keep up the great work.
  10. Well done Steve for remembering the date - I hadn't ! So many highlights looking back at those photo's one doesn't know where to start? Was it the Boeing Stearman buzzing the Hellcat racing up and down the peri-track at Parham, the sight of almost 80 WWII vehicles in line-astern convoy weaving their way through the Suffolk countryside, the Maurice Hammond buzz-job down the grass strip at Hardwick with brother in the back seat trying to keep hold of his lunch or the Friday night formation HMVF Drinking team in the tent, laughing and giggling to the early hours? Well it was none of them of course - Because who could ever forget the slowest fast-food outlet in the whole of the United Kingdom who we had the misfortune to engage at the 95th BG base at Horham! Yes, those catering guys will be remembered and talked about by far more people and for far longer than any of the highlights I have mentioned earlier. Its a shame to think that the P-51 Big Beautiful Doll shown on one of Steve's pictures is no-more (after the mid-air collision at Duxford a couple of years back) and I honestly think the chances of getting that many GMC's together again for a heavy haulage convoy is pretty unlikely with the cost of fuel. I also think the reason that the event was so special for many on here was because it was the first time for many of us that we actually put a face to the screen name! For instance, it was the first time that I had ever met Rosie, Joris, RCubed, Snapper, Zoomer, NOS, Degsy and many others (even Jack perhaps), and up until that time we were all just online HMVF'ers and didn't realise that we actually all existed for real ! Cheers for posting the trip down memory lane and it begs the question, "Should we do it all again?"
  11. Pretty sure it was Dave Poitja (or something like that) - I am thinking back 20 years now!
  12. I see from the number plate that the Dukw that sank recently in Albert Dock is in fact one of Rex Ward's old preserved MV's from the show circuit. I can remember him finishing this restoration as the number plate is RSY, which he joking commented to me stood for 'Rex and Shelia's Yatch!" Jeremey Vine did a good feature on this story earlier in the week on BBC Radio 2 and gave the whole Dukw Tours a real slating. My old one (that in a former life was rolled on the M6 when hit from behind by an artic lorry) is still doing sterling work for Viking Splash Tours in Dublin Harbour. I do however think the days of operating these dukw tours are now numbered. Perhaps they will trickle back into collectors hand and be returned to wartime configuration and preservation. Lets face it, restored GMC Dukw's are a rarer sight on the show circuit these days than Sherman tanks!
  13. Thanks for taking the time and trouble to post your images of Normandy 1994. You never see Dennis Robert's Diamond T (M20) combination loaded with his Sherman Grizzly anymore out and about; back then he used to drive it the length and bredth of the country and often abroad too. Good to reflect on past events.
  14. Somewhere in the mass photo collection that Brian Valente printed for you of Max Demuth's black and white photographs was a picture of a Dodge Weapons Carrier (from memory) loaded with 437th TCG guys. This photograph showed the bumper stencils and although will give you an insight in to what a 437th vehicle should wear, I guess won't help much on the Grantham HQ's front. Check through your photos though and see if you cant find the one I'm referring to.
  15. We did the Series of Red Ball Express convoy events in Wiltshire which ran from 1990 to 1995, I think the most CCKW's we managed to get together was 18, although the convoy's also had many Dodge's, DT's, Wards, etc etc and we totaled around 45 on the best Red Ball run. When Ed Abbott and I did Operation Bolero in 2007 here in Suffolk we had around 80 vehicles in the convoy and I think we had over 20 CCKW's. I'm intrigued now - i'll have to go and look up the participants list and work it out exactly when i get a moment!
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