AlienFTM

Glad to see that "Jack" is holding his can of Tennant's so that we cannot see which of the ladies he is admiring (famous set of pictures on the back). Every squaddy that ever was will empathise with this picture.

BAOR It was probably spring of 1982 and my cavalry time was coming to an end. 15/19H were on exercise. B Sqn set up a demonstration of a reserve demolition. Before the onset of hostilities, any bridge, etc that might be of use to an enemy would be destroyed in a primary demolition, leaving only those that we in the the recce screen on the FLOT (Forward Leading-edge of Own Troops) needed during the withdrawal in contact phases, encouraging 3 Shock Army to come on toward our prepared positions on the FEBA (Forward Edge of the Battle Area) in Armour / Infantry / Artillery killing zones. The crossings we required were reserve demolitions, prepared for demolition during the escalation phase, to be demolished after the recce screen had crossed, in the face of the enemy. The entire battle group and ISTR some guests from higher-up came to watch from the ridge on the near bank overlooking the demolition. Needless to say, a real reserve demolition would be on something like one of the bridges over the Weser around Hameln. The West Germans wouldn't really have appreciated an entire battle group clogging up one of their major river crossings, so the demonstration was carried out at a bridge over a stream a couple of feet wide. This had no effect on the validity of the demonstration. Being in FHQ, I was stood beside the Squadron Leader while he commentated on events over a loudspeaker system as they happened. A recce troop (half a troop - two cars?) in close support at the bridge, another troop (half a troop?) forward, watching for friendly forces withdrawing toward the bridge or 3 Shock Army trying to get there first. Engineers on the bridge, rigging it. A section of infantry, either from an infantry company attached to the battle group or from the medium recce squadron's own Support / Surveillance / Assault / Whatever-they-call-it-this-week Troop. The demo went well. The OC explained about the dangers to the Demolition Commander's health if he blew up the demolition early, leaving friendly forces stranded or if he left it too late and it fell to the enemy. In wartime it might lead to an interview without coffee or biscuits with a blindfold and 12 men with rifles. Ask the Demolition Commander at Remagen (Robert Vaughn in the film IIRC). I have seen the documentation a demolition commander must sign to take ownership of a bridge, to acknowledge the order to destroy it, the legalese that means nobody really wants to be a demolition commander and screw up. He pointed out that the demolition commander wanted to be on the near bank (obviously) on the ridge overlooking the demolition itself and its approaches. Just about where we were in fact. He also pointed out that if he was lucky he would have close-air support. At this moment an A10 popped up over the ridge behind us, over our heads (warm backwash in face: hold on to beret) and down the shallow slope and over the "river". Not a bad achievement when the "river" was only a few feet below us. A surprise to find myself looking over the engines and down into the cockpit from that height. The demonstration was well-received.

Nipper "took me to Tankfest" this year as an early birthday present. Big deal: I drove, I paid for petrol, I gave HIM the tour (he DID pay for entrance). We found ourselves next to a Chieftain just as they were about to resume letting people look inside. Elf&Safety demanded that they secure a set of steps so that we might climb up safely. I might have refused, saying, "In my day ..." out of principle but it was their Chieftain and rules are rules. Besides, Chieftains are higher than I remember and the joints don't bend like they used to did.

Funny you should ask that - a couple of hours ago I passed this link on to my team. SOME people don't need lessons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_Metal_Jacket

Stationed in Paderborn, I once found myself volunteered for CivPop, to become a citizen of Northern Ireland in an exercise at Salamander Anti-tank Range (so called because BAOR did not want to offend the West German government by training troops for Op Banner on West German soil) nearby at Sennelager. You and I called it Tin City. For some two weeks we largely bimbled around the streets of Tin City acting like civvies. But we took it in turns to carry out attacks on the Blues and Royals, who were training for an upcoming tour. There were plenty of attacks to go round. ---ooo0ooo--- One night, I and a mukker took one of the exercise area cars (hence the upcoming link to the quoted post) outside the wire and down the outside of the wriggly-tin fence. At 0200 local we loosed off a few feet of blank 7.62 link from the GPMG we'd been given for the purpose. Good job Sennelager Training Area was out in the ulu cos it would have had the locals complaining. Our pink instructed us to collect a handful of empty cases and dump them in the rear footwell, then drive the car back inside the wriggly-tin. Unfortunately, it didn't occur to either of us that freshly-fired 7.62 melts through four feet of virgin snow in the blink of an eye and it took a minute or two to find the cases we'd fired. We drove back in. Needless to say the fort had responded by sending the QRF out on the ground. They flagged us down and started to search the car. Five minutes later, nothing. The DS looked daggers at us as if asking, "Why didn't you put any rounds in the back like you were told?" I nodded back furiously, intimating in no uncertain terms that we had. The DS gave the QRF a hard time, stook his hand in the footwell and pulled out a round. Waste of a night's sleep. ---ooo0ooo--- One afternoon the same two of us were given an M16 with instructions to take a pot shot out of the window of an empty house at a passing patrol. (Tin City was so called because it a small estate of West Belfast had been created in wriggly tin for the purpose. By 1978 the "tin" bit had been subsumed by a much larger estate built of breeze blocks.) Our job was simply to follow the Pink. Everything that happened had to happen for a purpose with the Directing Staff in place in order to train, guide and correct the troops being trained. So the designated patrol came down the street. Dave fired a couple of blank rounds at them. We knew to stand a couple of feet back from the window and we'd be in total darkness to people outside because of the different ambient light levels inside and out, and we stood and watched them go into blue-arrsed fly mode. We realised that they had eventually worked out where the rounds had come from and the Pink had us remain inside. There was a knock at the door. I put the still hot M16 behind the door while Dave opened the door to them. The patrol commander was dead polite. He asked what we were doing in the house, which he understood (for the purposes of the exercise) to be empty. Quick as a flash, in broad brogue, Dave told him he was an estate agent showing me around. I, in an equally broad brogue (well we had both been in NI in the last couple of years), confirmed this. I kept trying not to look down at the M16 behind the door, hoping nobody tried to push past. We both also kept trying not to laugh. Another waste of time. ---ooo0ooo--- In the second week the RHG/D and their attached 16/5 Lancers were beginning to get the hang. I was sat in my front room when there was the sound of gunfire outside. A gunman ran through my house, handing me his M16 (per the Pink) and legging it out the back. I parked the M16 "under the bed" (it was a sleeping bag on a camp bed) and waited while the patrol poured in in hot pursuit. I acted all innocent. "Oi hevent a cleuw wot yiz er on aboit." They searched the house ... and searched the house. The same DS as previously looked at me and I nodded. "Have you looked under the bed?" I was grabbed by the scruff and marched out to a Pig (the only one I ever saw) and to this day I can still see the Brummie 16/5L telling me, "You'll be going down for life for this." The Pig took me to the fort, where I was debriefed, had a cup of coffee and walked back to the house. 20 minutes after the shooting, the same patrol walked by and Brummie did a double-take that said without words "A life sentence doesn't mean life any more then." ---ooo0ooo--- Because, as Orange Forces, we had access to the Pink, everybody always knew when it was about to kick off. sometimes we had to clear the streets; sometimes we had to fill them, even if we weren't actively part of the serial. We made ourselves as comfortable as we could. The cold was West German winter cold: nothing to be done. We had sleeping bags and supplies of coal to burn in the flimsy breeze-block houses. We were fed (centrally, in the "Fish & Chip Shop" on the main street, from Norwegians and urn brought down from the camp). We had beer available (next door in the "pub"). Many was an evening we paraded in the pub and attacked the cans (the cans were kept as ammunition for the riot that always happened eventually). The QM was OC CivPop and he'd teach us Republican songs that we could be singing when a patrol visited the pub (as patrols did in NI). But we knew whenthey were coming. Often as not we sang Geordie songs until five minutes before the patrol appeared and then we went Republican. Whenever a serial was about to go off, I'd try and make sure I was in a house on the path the QRF would take in response, with my ghetto blaster (that I'd brought to help make myself comfortable) and my cassette of 20 Thumping Great Hits by the Dave Clark Five. Every time a patrol hurtled past the house, out of our window would boom, "Here we come again oo-oo-ooh. Catch us if you can ..." By mid-exercise the troops were shaking fists as they ran past. By EndEx, they were laughing as they ran by. So to the point of the post. Every Tin City exercise the DS would demonstrate to the troops the effect of torching a car. For this purpose, there were always plenty of cars left lying around camp that had failed their BFG Test (like a TUV - and an MOT - Test) and squaddy had not bothered, been posted, etc. Many of these were donated to Tin City for the purpose. Plus when the exercise required a vehicle, it was nobody's pride and joy getting trashed. BAOR - it really was that much fun.

More or less what he said. Replace the last "," with a "-" and you are about there. The HIB was an extremely light, simple headset from which one earpiece could be removed so that an infantryman or B vehicle driver could hear what was going on whilst still listening to his net. Headsets issued for command vehicles were for staff users, therefore more comfortable, better quality and two permanent earpieces so that you could work one net or IC (crew intercom) and monitor another.

You might think that. Even when we had too many Royal Armoured Corps regiments to count* with hardly an SLR between them, nobody ever saw a Sterling mag pouch. We all got SLR mag pouches and lived with them. _____ * I think it was about 18.

If only 3 Shock Army had still been using Matildas when they were lined up against BAOR in the 70s and 80s ...

That's the one I was alluding to previously. ISTR the equivalent of a whole squadron in a dusty single room in the attic. Crash out route was through the town and Deity have mercy on you if you got crashed out and timed and you didn't respond quickly enough for the merkins because of the rush hour traffic. Edit: a third of a squadron: 1/3 on site rotating with those in camp and another third on 45 minutes standby further out. something like that: it was a lo-o-o-ong time ago

39 was a Field Regiment in Sennelager when I passed briefly back through Padders in 1985. I am fairly sure they were there when the Uncle Tom's Cabin Football Team played a match in the same barracks (Dempsey?) around 1980. But I could be wrong.

ISTR things like lightweights, aside from the NSN, could be ordered by a size rendered as a single serial number, like maybe 75 rings a bell as fitting me perfectly ("Army uniform fits you perfectly? You are a freak, Trooper Alien."). Then one day around 1980 I went to exchange a pair and the sizing system had all changed and I could never again get lightweights that fitted me so well. Quite likely the two are related.

I'm not entirely surprised that, come the end of the war, the nukes got pulled early on. I am happy to know that Alanbrook Bks, Paderborn (and the garrison as a whole - my best man from 1981 was GSM of Sennelager until a couple of years ago) is still occupied, which on balance more than makes up for Osnabrück having been closed recently.

Don't you mean a gentleman, a scholar and an acrobat? http://www.metrolyrics.com/the-pink-panther-theme-lyrics-henry-mancini.html

Item 21 on page S2 looks like the Breech Mechanism Lever (BML: the TLA finally came back to mind).

I took over 77FM51 (a 3/4 ton FFR, callsign 29) in 1977, which was a wreck when B Sqn 15/19H took it over from 1RTR on 19 May 1976. ISTR its history made it no younger than 1973.

The only time I ever sat in a Saladin was after our OC Training Wing (who was a legend and I believe may once have been a member of this forum) had "acquired" a Saladin which we understood was to become a gate guardian. It sat on the back square for ages then disappeared again. While it was there I was instructed to get inside it and womble a piece of kit (I forget now what it was, but I did notice that the gun bore a strong resemblance to the 76mm L23A1 of the Scorpion, which it would because the latter owed a lot to the former). All I can add to this is that: 1. I understand that Scorpion gunner and commander sat on opposite sides of the turret from those in Saladin. (Scorpion was built for BAOR whereas Saladin was just built. It made sense to have the commander on the off-side of the vehicle so that he could help the driver look round traffic. So Scorpion commander sat on the left - off side in BAOR - while Saladin commander sat on the right - off side in the UK.) 2. In Scorpion, the role of loader was performed by the commander so that the gunner could concentrate on keeping the gun on the target. I cannot imagine Saladin being different, so that the breech-opening lever ought to be on the commander's, not the gunner's side. Note that the 76 (in Scorpion at least) was quick-firing. After the first round is fired, the recoil causes the breech to open automatically and spit the empty case into the bin below, ready for the commander (whose drills would have him pick the next round out of the ready-rounds bin and sit it on his knee ready to load) to slam the next one in. The round slams into the breech, the breech closes on it, the commander "makes" the make-safe lever (which he will have broken to make the gun safe while he reloads) and the commander shouts "LOADED" so that the gunner can continue his action. So the breech-opening lever is only necessary to open the breech the first time and for stripping and assembling. Unfortunately for Scorpion, the gas that activates the breech opening is largely carbon monoxide, and that's why H&S cut down Scorpion in its prime (and now it is exactly what the troops need in the sandpit to lob a medium-sized lump of HE into a compound a mile away RIGHT NOW, not in two minutes' time after going through a fire mission or 15 minutes' time when they have got an F/A18 up in the air). It wasn't designated FV101 CVR(T) FS (for "Fire Support") for nothing.

Weren't either 5 Heavy Regt RA or 50 Missile in Hemer? Or were they next door in Menden. I know I did site guards hosted by each and I am sure one or other was either in Hemer or Menden and memory refuses to fill in the details. Site Guard - arguably one of the down sides of BAOR during the period, but even then there were fond memories to be had.

This picture shows Clansman antenna bases which post-dates 1972 by some time.

I'd assume the fourth Ferret is on the servicing ramps (present in every barracks), usually next to the washdown).

You'd really prefer a ZSU23/4: four of same mounted on a "tank" chassis

There are Friends of the Tank Museum and friends of the Tank Museum. I suspect the previous poster was referring to friends, not Friends. HTH

I have learned something useful: In 1779, the light troop (of the Tinny Tenth) was detached to form the 19th Light Dragoons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19th_Light_Dragoons Luckily, further reading of the wiki link reminds me that this iteration of the 19th was disbanded on 10 September 1821 due to reductions in size of the British Army. Whenever there were reductions, it was the junior regiments (higher numbers) that got it. This means that when in 1862, the 19th Royal Hussars were created and given permission to inherit the battle honours of the 19th Light Dragoons, they had no direct link to the Tinny Tenth whose prevarication under Slade might have caused carnage among the 15th at Sahagun but for the latter's brave change that led to the routing of two French cavalry regiments and so many many casualties inflicted on the French 8th Dragoons in particular that the 8th were disbanded as a direct result. So that when 15th and 19th merged in 1922 (19th had again been disbanded, but subsequently this became an amalgamation), there was no tainting by a historical line that included the Tinny Tenth in the regiment I (and Bazz) served in, 15th/19th The King's Royal Hussars.

11th amalgamated with the Tinny Tenth (so dreadfully led by Slade at Sahagun that they missed out on the 15th's unique battle honour) some time in the early 60s IIRC (before my time) maybe 63 (edit: later than I thought - 1969) to become The Royal Hussars. In 1992 the Royal Hussars merged with 14th/20th The King's Hussars (14th and 20th had merged in the 1922 amalgamations) to become the King's Royal Hussars. 15th/19th The King's Royal Hussars (15th and 19th had merged in 1922) merged with 13th/18th Hussars (Queen Mary's Own) (ditto) in 1992 to become the Light Dragoons. The Queen's Own Hussars (3rd and 7th merged in 1958) merged with The Queen's Royal Irish Hussars to become The Queen's Royal Hussars (The Queen's Own & Royal Irish) in 1993. Are you keeping up at the back? I hope you are taking notes: I'll be testing you later.

One exercise, probably about 1980, Command Troop would be spending the start of the exercise with HQ Sqn. (In a recce regt, Command Troop was in HQ (Admin) Sqn for administration purposes: other times and places, Command Troop was in D Sqn (Command and Support). Merging HQ and D saved a Squadron HQ leaving more bodies for sabre troops.) On exercise, Command Troop was normally on its own. So, because HQ Sqn was not blessed with radio vehicles, I found myself Commanding Rebro Ferret 98A as last vehicle of an HQ SHQ packet in the convoy. (Convoys were broken up into packets of 5 - 8 vehicles with gaps between packets so that civvies could overtake. Ideally at least front and rear vehicle had radio comms so that if somebody broke down (in theory the vehicle in front ought to stop and find out, but it was easy to miss), the packet commander in the lead vehicle could take appropriate action (which might be "let the REME sweeping up at the back sort it.") We had been awoken at 0200hrs with the call of "Active Edge", an exercise to demonstrate that in the event of a surprise Soviet incursion, we were able to move out of camp as per the four hours' notice to move that BAOR endured for over 40 years. Active Edge might be called by anybody from CO up to SACEUR. When SACEUR called it, he'd have silently notified the Bonn government and it usually (which wasn't often) happened in the early afternoon with absolutely no warning and fans encountering an awesome amount of ordure. Otherwise, it tended to be called at the start of an exercise by the exercise commander, normally GOC 3 Armd Div in our case, or, as mentioned, our own CO for regimental, squadron or troop training. These always happened at 0200hrs, so that the formation would be out of camp and clear of the rush hour by 0600. Especially useful in Garrisons like Paderborn, where Alanbrooke Barracks was surrounded by housing. Of course this didn't allow for breakdowns. So long as vehicles cleared the back gate, they were deemed to have moved within the time limit, but there were a series of traffic lights on our route out and my wife-to-be always knew there had been an Active Edge when she saw a dead Scorpion at the second set. Every time. This also added a certain amount of embuggerance. If the Commies ever came over the IGB, it was always hoped that rising tension would allow us to move into our General Deployment Plan positions at leisure and sit for a couple of weeks preparing and recceing - after all, time spent in recce is never wasted. Getting us out of bed at 0200hrs on a Monday morning was the best substitute available to make us feel like we'd been three weeks in the field. Some people tended to find out that Active Edge had been called when they staggered back into camp after the pubs shut (usually around 0200hrs) and found the place full of blue-arrsed flies. Knowing they were going to be on exercise for three weeks (notice I didn't say "dry": the British soldier works best half-cut), one last blast was in order. So we had been up at 0200hrs, it was raining and we quickly reached the Autobahn. I was last vehicle in the packet. No need to read a map. "Jock, follow the vehicle in front."And I got my head down, as best one can wearing a headset and resting head being the commander's windscreen (local manufacture) of a Mark 1 Ferret in the pouring rain. The crew intercom (I/C) squawked. I stirred. I got and elbow in the log. "Whazzup?" "There's a Soxmis car just passed us." I was awake in a blink. "Hello 8 this is 98A watch your mirrors, there's a Soxmis car about to pass you. It's ... er ... so wet that I missed the number. Over." Brixmis (the reciprocal British Military Mission to Soxmis, the Soviet Military Mission) were supposed always to be pleased to get sightings, even when the cars were entitled to be where they were, because every sighting allowed them to pin down where a Soxmis vehicle had been and sometimes it allowed them to prove that the vehicle had been in a restricted area. They used to send out thank-you postcards. I never got one for passing my report up the line. Ought I to be bitter? Probably not, cos I'd have been stealing Jock's thunder.

And much warmer and less hard work sat out of sight and out of mind in the SHQ Troop cage than lifting and replacing CVR(T) deck armour outside in the German winter and not feeling the loss of your fingers if you slipped. ;o)