AlienFTM

The name Briggs & Stratton rings a bell. I suspect they made the 500W generators we used to carry on our command vehicles to run the Command Post without needing to run the vehicle engines. Feature: the end of the fuel lead went into an attachment that exactly matched the hole cover on a jerry can. Open the can, drop the end of the hose into the benz, seal it shut exactly as you normally would and Roberto the latino long-distance lorry driver is your mother's live-in lover.

I'd concur with Flotilla Ship's Staff and conclude it is in fact the door to the Admiral's Day Room on the flagship, for running the flotilla as opposed to the main bridge where the ship's captain runs the ship. But it's just a guess. Look carefully at the difference between the lower case s and f. Until about the 19th century the two letters looked very similar in English too. Actually the more I look it it, the more intrigued I become as the s at the start of Schiff is different from the s at the start of Staffe. ISTR a rule depending on whether the letter s is at the start or in the middle of the word, but I cannot see the differentiation in this case. I wonder if it's because Staffe is the main noun in the construct?

I don't care where you have got your hand stuck. Have you seen what I have trodden in?

That's fine in the context. Convoys to be broken up into packets of between five and eight vehicles. REME vehicles (where present) at the back to collect the deaders as they come to them.

Good answer (the whole thing not just the bit I have quoted). ... then squaddy gets told to repaint the vehicle and SLAP Olive Drab and Black alles ueber the Platz.

Of course the Israelis acquired Shermans and pushed the design as far as they could, creating Ishermans and Super-Shermans and I suspect one or both of these used a 105mm tank gun - probably the same as fitted to their Cents. I am sure someone will go away and come back with answers - saves me putting in any effort.

Flashback to the 1970s and Death Race 2000 (haven't they just remade that?). Driver decides while they are hammering down the road that he needs the timing retarded a gnat's gonad so he gets his (female) co-pilot to climb out onto the engine and do it on the fly. As soon as he gets her out front, he hits the brakes, hoping to send her flying and get extra points for then running her over.

Coincidentally I just found found this Firefly pic on a site run by a 15/19H Old Comrade: http://www.hussar.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/images/ShermanFirefly-VC-RSG.jpg It shows the blanked-off hull MG nicely.

I have this image of Ann-Margret and beans ...

I have never seen a bus wearing a high visibility jacket. It would startle me if I did. As for driving it, I hope the jacket doesn't obscure the doors.

Moved to SwanWICK in Hants, not SwanAGE in Dorset

Anyone know who this is? http://www.arrse.co.uk/cpgn2/Forums/viewtopic/t=114136.html

No idea but into my head pops a Portee (I think) a truck to carry an artillery piece instead of towing it. I can see in my head a picture in a model-making mag from about 40 years ago of a 6pdr Portee for the desert. Since the beret badge looks like RA and the time looks like it might go back to the days of towed arty that would fit on the back of a lorry, it makes sense in my private world.

I think it's like double glazing: people expect to get back some or all of the money they have spent on it.

Haven't flown for nearly 30 years. No need or desire to. Holidays in the UK, pumping my money back into our own economy. I don't personally NEED it it. Do I WANT it? Different question. Much harder to call but I think the answer must still be NO.

A mate in 15/19H, when CB became the latest must-have (I didn't - I was a Control Signaller and saw enough radios during the day) about 1980, a mate fitted one to his car. I remember thinking what a low frequency German CB must use because his antenna was enormous, so much so that when he drove into the underground car park in downtown Paderborn, it got a serious smack on the lintel. I am sure the citizens' band has changed over time and moved to VHF. I do remember that German CB was illegal in the UK and vice versa (different bands for one thing) and at the ports it became a game trying not to get your CB confiscated. As for the OP's rods. If the antenna is made up of three sections, it is Clansman and the length is three metres (for Clansman HF). If it is composed of two rods, it is Larkspur and the length is 8' (for Larkspur VHF).

Forgot a couple of Islanders, one at JSPC Netheravon for my parachute course, the other at JSPC Bad Lippspringe near Paderborn, whence I was posted (Paderborn, not the JSPC) immediately after the parachute course. Netheravon had a Dragon or a Rapide in the hangar which the sports parachutists preferred over the Islander because it was so slow they could all get out close together. But it VOR during our course.

It didn't take me long to realise. I transferred out and was attached to a REME MRG. My first exercise with them was in deep snow. Come night-time, out came camp beds, blankets, pillows, kerosene heaters, kitchen sinks. Me? I rolled out the maggot and jumped in, letting the maggot sink into the snow and letting the snow insulate me from the real cold. After a fortnight of demonstrating to the REEMs how REAL soldiers got by in the cold, I stopped and asked myself WHY? Anybody can be cold, hard and tough. It has been a long slide from that moment to, "I'll put another degree on the thermostat, then."

RTR (and cavalry) regiments do not have battalions. The battalion is a quirk of the infantry. Infantry battalions sit on the same level as regiments in all other arms. An infantry regiment is, for want of a better description, an administrative brigade. It is not usual for an infantry regiment (brigade) to fight as a brigade. Infantry battalions (and others) have companies; RAC (and others) have squadrons; Artillery have batteries. These are all equivalent. Within a tank / armoured / recce regiment, vehicle names (where used) traditionally reflect the squadron. Thus as you say (in the paragraph I snipped before the one I quoted), your vehicle is ANNOUS, in A Squadron, which is exactly as it should be. As to its significance, my guess was it's a battle honour or similar, but Googling at first glance only links to a family name in the Middle East and the USA. Maybe 1 RTR had a famous member by this name, immortalised on the side of one of their tanks?

In roughly chronological order: Boeing 707 Super Constellation DH Beaver DC4 Aero-Commander (I cannot remember what took us to Austria in 1971) Wessex VC-10 737 727 Puma And I cannot remember flying since I returned from Gib in 1980 to BAOR with a weekend break in the UK because of a flight-booking problem and no Air Trooping over the weekend. Is this some kind of record in this world we live in? Except, come to think of it, the Puma, where I was to act as translator / guide for a section of French Spahis (no, not spies! Pay attention at the back) that we ferried from one side of Vogelsang training area to the other in March 1982. And the 727 that brought me me back from Gib to Gatwick, a week later (about March 1980? It was the time PIRA murdered a British Colonel at HQ 1 (BR) Corps, Bielefeld and the alert state went through the roof) the British Caledonian aircraft flying the same route disappeared over the ocean. I have a history of just missing or having a close one just miss major disasters. But that is off-topic.

I agree. TBH I have been surprised to find the Five-Oh getting a new lease of life in the sandpits. I thought they'd all been laid to rest with due dignity when Chieftain's RMG was replaced by Barr & Stroud. Personally I'd rather have half a dozen .30" rounds in the air than one or two .50". Each is going to render the target hors de combat, but there are more of them. "Targets will scream when hit."

Bazz you are absolutely right. Adrian, that was going to be my guess. I also have this little bell ringing in my head that the British did not go in for the morale-booster ... I mean commander's Five-Oh ... preferring to stay inside the turret and avoid being shot with half the body exposed. But I stand (half out of the turret) to be corrected on that one.

I was going to say SALT, but SALT was a Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty. The agreement in question was, I believe, the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe or CFE (as shown by a search for cfe arms agreement in Google taking me straight to Wikipedia): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Conventional_Armed_Forces_in_Europe

Try ordering a giant sheet of sandpaper. Who'd notice the difference?

In the Liverpool Rifles, theft was so rife they had to nail bedsprings to the floor. Sorry was it not a caption competition then?