AlienFTM

Clive your surmises are right. It wasn't issued like that but as the pully shrank and the neck stretched, this kept the RSM from seeing that you had only ironed the collar of your shirt. I think it became less prevalent when the Jersey, Heavy, Wool became rather more Jersey, Polyester/Wool, Heavy at the end of the 70s, gained epaulettes and stopped shrinking quite so much.

According to my sources (which are buried deep and not seen for 20 years), B vehicles weren't normally expected to use cam paint anyway ... or carry Balkankreuz or callsign, just unit tac sign. Doesn't mean it didn't happen but that was the spec I have read.

Nice looking BMP - exactly what we expected to meet first if the Commies came to play, and what Orange Forces Scimitars were meant to represent.

I have Frog tactical missiles screaming at me. Or a meringue?

My house cost me just under £35,000 21 years ago!

Interesting - Shermans and Lees coming off the same factory floor.

I spotted a link to this bottom left of something else entitled something like "Related stories" or something. I didn't remember posting on the thread (which hasn't been added to for over a year) so I revisited. I definitely don't remember posting the last post (above). Amazingly I did this week find something directly relating to the previous post. Having unofficially retraded me from Military Accountant to Combat Accountant, my boss started unofficially retrading lots of people. He informed the master chef (who was a good bloke) that his slop-jockeys - I mean cooks - now had to address him as Combat Chef. As others who have served will tell you, this is most definitely a fundamental dichotomy, but it was a good laugh at the time. Imagine my surprise this week to watch a programme on telly called "Combat Chefs". Laugh? I nearly did.

Wasn't Rolf's uncle that died of flu was it? Didn't he die in the battle? Wasn't it the Scottish lass whose great uncle was taken into hospital the day before he was due to ship back to Blighty and was dead and buried three weeks after Armistice? 90 years ago today he died IIRC.

I'd guess the picture is British. AFAIK, only British censors removed unit markings from wartime photographs. Looks like a three-colour camouflage to me (the front plate shows dark / medium / light), I cannot say I have ever seen a colour scheme like this on a British vehicle. There again, I cannot recall seeing it on an American vehicle either. Might it be Canadian? (Cannot find a "shrug" smiley. Too Luddite to try hard.)

I am having a deja vu moment here because I am sure I have said it before. The Airfix White M3 Halftrack comes with an optional "canvas tilt" piece to cover the back (omitting the Five-oh and mount), and Red Cross markings.

For images in a music video that evoke the pointlessness of war, I always find I Believe In Father Christmas by Greg Lake one not to miss. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=FqOfXumI18A Note that this video runs maybe half a minute longer than you ever see on music TV and totally changes the message. This is something I dislike about music TV who want to concentrate on the music and don't need the video once the body of the track has finished. They are also guilty of usually (but not absolutely always) cutting: A minute and a half of guitar solo from the end of Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush and maybe even more from November Rain by Guns'n'Roses. I am sure this could grow into quite a list.

Frankie Vaughan: rhyming slang apposite to this thread.

Funnily enough, there was an article about the battle of Mirbat in the paper on Saturday and a close up of the medals of one of the Fijians. I clocked a GSM 1962 with three clasps including NI and commented out loud about the manky state of the medals, GSM in particular. I pointed out to nobody in particular that my medals had been in a drawer for 20 years until I dug them out for the reunion in July and they were in a better state. I hadn't cleaned the GSM, whose silver was as tarnished as a silver medal gets, before setting off for the regiment, certain in the knowledge that on the Friday I could buy Brasso, Silver Dip, yellow duster, whatever from the NAAFI to give it a good seeing to before the church service on the Sunday. Imagine my shock when the girl in the NAAFI told me they couldn't sell Brasso and the like for Health and Safety reasons, so the squaddies had to buy cleaning kit offsite. I had a brainwave. Outside the guard room there have been for many decades two giant brass gongs commemorating the deaths of 15th Hussars in the Great War and 15/19th Hussars in the Second World War. I had never had the pleasure of cleaning them because I was a good boy and didn't get punished with jankers, etc, but it occurred to me that if I sweet-talked the Guard Commander, he'd let me use some of the vast quantity of industry-strength Brasso kept for this purpose. When I found I couldn't get Brasso, I had considered quietly putting the medals in my pocket, but when on the Saturday Big Lou, my former RSM and vehicle commander had left me with the words, "I'll personally inspect your medals and check they have you number, rank and name engraved on them before the church service," I decided against. So I got enough of a shine on my GSM (the UNFICYP medal is brown, allegedly made from compressed cardboard according to urban myth) to pass a cursory glance. As it happens, within days it was manky again. My daughter, her husband and my new granddaughter happened to be visiting and my daughter asked if she might see my medals, do I duly produced. Later that afternoon I ordered 4GB of RAM for my PC. Now that XP SP3 supports 4GB of RAM (3GB for apps and 1GB for Windows). Day before yesterday, a jiffy bag arrived. I assumed it was my 4GB of RAM, but it turned out to be a Veteran's Badge, which I had applied for from the Veteran's Agency a couple of weeks ago and promptly forgotten about. When Wor Lass asked me on MSN if she might open the bag, I warned her not to touch the circuit boards. She was confused when she found an enamel badge. By this time I had already told my team that my 4GB of RAM had turned up, having been ordered and shipped only a day or two earlier and I was well impressed with Overclockers. So then I had to explain to the team that it was a veteran's badge, not RAM, which led to a team member asking about the medals. And as luck would have it, sat on my desk this morning are a GSM 1962, Clasp Northern Ireland and an UNFICYP Medal for show and tell. At the time of Mirbat, the SAS was next to unknown and kept that way. Not a handful of years later they were assaulting hijacked airliners and foreign embassies and suddenly the world remembered. Now what was the point of this posting?

You should have done what I and military pilots have always done: close one eye to save it. I have to point out that military pilots do it to survive nuclear flash, not necessarily for when they are at the Frankie Vaughan.

Some 30 years ago I once saw one tear past our Battle Group HQ and asked myself the same question: "Is that going backwards or forwards?" Whenever I see one, I still wonder.

Sadly not. As I say, we were expressly warned off the village.

One of these: http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.warwheels.net/images/SaracenCommandTROWBRIDGE1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.warwheels.net/SaracenCommandpostINDEX.html&usg=__9_CdFxRBLmPiA2mrCgD7gdfKLpE=&h=521&w=844&sz=164&hl=en&start=2&tbnid=49O9INbW6zZiEM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=145&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dsaracen%2Barmoured%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den Or see the bottom one on this page: http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.panzerbaer.de/types/pix/uk_fv610_saracen_command-001.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.panzerbaer.de/types/uk_fv603.htm&usg=__qrSTmKEZkd-vA8wyAfw0flYfXu4=&h=416&w=640&sz=56&hl=en&start=22&tbnid=AqpDJ1yaEtoOzM:&tbnh=89&tbnw=137&prev=/images%3Fq%3D%252BSaracen%2B%252BFV610%26start%3D20%26imgtype%3Dphoto%26as_st%3Dy%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D20%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN

One of my few remaining photos of my time in service (if I could find it) shows B Sqn, 15/19H in Tyneham Gap in 1977. I was OC's LR driver and he was really excited because instead of just getting the usual ranges to fire our Scorpions on, we were allowed to be the first squadron to use Tyneham Battle Run in many a year. The squadron leader was adamant that due respect was to be paid to the village for the reasons you have seen presented. I suspect that although the battle run was actually routed down the valley, it went around the village. Baz might remember. I had to remove the canvas because as well as the squadron leader in the front, we carried Instructors, Gunnery (IGs) and high-ranking observers. We followed close behind each troop in turn as they carried out their orders. On one occasion, we stopped right behind the troop, I dismounted the LR and stood myself behind the nearest Scorpion to try and catch the next one along firing. I was legal because I was not forward of the gun trunnions of the car I was next to, but because of the way they had stopped, I was actually slightly forward of the next one, so the angle of the pic is unusual. No matter how hard I tried to time the picture with the gunner pressing the tit on the "W" of his shouted "FIRING NOW!", I never actually got an action pic. On the first run down, the Senior IG and the squadron leader had me collect mushrooms from one of the fields. Untouched in years, some were immense, maybe a foot across. I placed them carefully in the back, but after we had been down and up with five sabre troops and with people standing in the back, all we had at the end was a mess that muggins here had to clean up.

The top one is a Saracen APC RA, much higher than an ACV. With most of the attachments missing, I wouldn't care to state whether the second is an ACV or an APC (which were the same body shell).

ISTR our IS LRs had the number plate above one of the bumpers in three rows of two. I also STR that the rear view is about the worst view for seeing anything. I think there were fittings for a "Makrolon" (see earlier post) rear door, but this was never carried. This being open-topped, obviously doesn't have the "Makrolon" armour enclosing the troops. The "Makrolon" roof had a hatch so that we could provide top cover, which meant that the LR carried a wire cutter on the front to protect top cover from being decapitated by a wire over the road. From the side, I am sure the "Makrolon" rolled under the body to protect the troops in the back from improvised mines and made the vehicle look very low. All the extra weight on the back did in fact make the vehicle extremely light of steering but a pig for a New-In-Green Trooper to drive. So no, on reflection I don't think this is an IS Pack LR. If it were, a lot of it has been removed.

In the media Friday or Thursday experts were predicting a fall of 10p/l by Christmas. Obviously some of that 10p is included in the drop you have reported.

TBF I don't know if 3 Div was even on the Army's OrBat at the time this vehicle was in service. (I cannot be bothered to go and read a history of 3 Div. There was a heavy tome available on the subject from 15/19H PRI in the late 70s / early 80s because, obviously, we were 3 Armd Div divisional troops but ISTR it cost a Trooper's month's wages.) I have seen an OrBat for BAOR and I know it was forever being changed. Given that it was was reactivated in BAOR on 1 Jan 1978, the question of whether it was Infantry or Armoured during the lifetime of the Humber is entirely moot. Of course if 3 Div was NOT active at the time, I claim the presence of a 3 Div sign (upside down or not) is another error.

It's donated according to what's in its OrBat. If it's configured as an Armoured Division, it's an Armoured Division. For a modern, non-IS role, it'll be an Armoured division.

Southampton was (and still is, just) a garrison town. Pre-war regular units would have barracks and bedspace for all, but come the war, the garrison would be increased to handle the demands of the war, saturating the available resources and leading to personnel being billeted out. Invasion troops then arrive in 1944 and there is no capacity left to billet them ... even if the powers that be had wanted them to. Kept together in tented camps behind barbed wire and armed guards for their short time here was far more secure.

Oh I didn't keep it. I gave it a damn good look and photographed and photocopied it. Her own son did his time in the Coldstream Guards and I am quite sure that her father's stuff will be passed on to her children when the time comes.