AlienFTM

In the early 80s we walked into the NAAFI in Mercer / Imphal Barracks, Osnabruck (which sadly closed a few weeks ago: that's Mercer and Imphal Barracks, not NAAFI or Osnabruck - though Army's days in Osnabruck are seriously limited). Wor Lass was looking for Earl Grey Tea. Tea was duty-free and rationed, along with petrol, cigarettes, coffee amd alcohol, so we had to be served by hand and have our ration books stamped. Having discovered beverages whilst living in Colombia, I am a coffee man myself. Not seeing any Earl Grey on the shelf, she asked the young soldier's wife behind the counter what tea she had. "We have NAAFI Red, NAAFI Blue or NAAFI Gold." "No Earl Grey?" "We have NAAFI Red, NAAFI Blue or NAAFI Gold." Get the picture? ---ooo0ooo--- Two old war heroes are sat on a bench in the village, remembering the good times. One says, "Remember when they used to put Bromide in our tea to stop us lusting after the pretty French girls? I think it's beginning to take effect."

I once read (about 30 years ago) that it took 20 years in peacetime to learn what took six months in wartime. Wow. I never knew that.

Drop me a line when you plan to come down - I am only 60 - 90 minutes' easy drive away.

Myth: The German Army of WW2 was the world's first totally-mechanised Army. Fact: I cannot remember which work I read which claimed that at the height of Wehrmacht mechanisation in 1943, some 50% of units still used horses (consider the Falaise Pocket, where horses died in vast numbers trying to escape the onslaught). Fact: By September 1939 the Royal Armoured Corps was 100% mechanised. 15/19H (my own and Baz's forebears) and 13/18H (with whom they merged in 1992 to become the Light Dragoons) ditched their last horses immediately before the BEF set sail and spent the Sitzkrieg learning how to use tanks. See Allan Mallinson, Light Dragoons.

Picture of SdKfz251: I had to look twice to work out why it had a Sherman turret mounted on the back!

If I were you in particular, I'd wear the uniformand medals with pride. It should be obvious to any idiot that you are not trying to pass yourself off as 80 years old. Carry your own medals in your pocket and if anyone hassles you for wearing medals you didn't earn, dip in, whip them out and wave them at him, then ask to see his if he is so damn clever. In my case it'd be a GSM 1962, Clasp Northern Ireland and an UNFICYP Medal. Ah halcyon days.

Hope they don't dig up the regimental square of any ex-Wehrmacht or Waffen-SS barracks in Germany. According to legend, EVERY British barracks in BAOR during the Cold War had a tunnel system underneath, with a stay-behind supply of Tigers and Panthers that had been bricked up and that two sentries once found the tunnel - one went mad, the other was never seen again. In the 1970s it was made clear to us that no Russian tank was ever scrapped. As they brought out new tanks, they were supplied to the tank regiments. The old ones were passed on to the tank battalions of non-armoured regiments and everything cascaded on down. In 1976 our UNFICYP Intelligence Officer offered a crate to the first patrol to report a sighting of a Turkish Army T34/85. This was always the case until the reduction treaty of the early 90s. Apart from the T72 which was designed as a cheap export model of the T64. Until the Commies needed a new army to send into Afghanistan in 1979. With not enough T64s to go round, they took T72s.

He lets me go off-topic to tell stories - he wanted me to write a column but I told him I work better replying to others' snippets, so to just go ahead. Go on, do it. Far better to ask forgiveness afterwards than to be refused permission beforehand. I'll let Jack go to the front of the queue to slap me face (see SdKfz change of ownership thread) if he says no to your request.

I THOUGHT so. My uncle drove one (several - serially) in the 1960s and 70s and I also remember a guy I worked with was a collector and had his back garden full of Imps and Huskies in various (mainly poor) states of repair.

That gives me a warm feeling because clarifying and magnifying to 3*, the writing suggests to me that it took place in fighting on what I made out to be 1 - 2 Mar 19. Looking again it is more likely 1 - 2 Mai 19 (May). The barrel of the left-hand gun (right-hand as we look at it) looks to me like it has a water cooling jacket. Not sure. Not sure about the other - doesn't look the same but I cannot be sure, and why do that?

You been waiting 25 years to say that???

You mean a Hillman Minx estate? Sure it isn't a Husky? Maybe too big for a Husky so yer probably right. This end of the third row ... is that a Land Rover body mounted on full tracks? Or a meringue?

Spot the deliberate mistake. The red-highlighted text ought to have read "It wasn't a tracked vehicle." I'll slap me own face: save you the trouble.

I occasionally frequent a football chat room when there is a game on (less and less as Sky gives such good coverage). On one particular day I was chatting with an old mate from ACF and 15/19H who married a lass from Medicine Hat and now lives there, recently returned from the Sandpit with the RCAC, and a crab serving at RAF Gutersloh. Come half time I took a comfort break and returned to be greeted by the crab with "You ate your horse?" Tommy S had been explaining how we'd been donkey wallopers and when push came to shove, donkey wallopers ate their horses. Confused? I was.

As we have seen in this thread, the original was a one-shot weapon and prone to failure due to broken wires. However I doubt anyone who makes a replica will intend to turn it into a smoking hole at the end of the display. Whay I would be tempted to do is use something like Don 10 or steel-cored washing line to represent the command wires, whilst actually controlling it by radio.

bump

Week before last, Wor Lass was scrolling through the channels and I spotted the word "Airfix" so I got her to press Record. It turns out that late in 2006 somebody bought all the Airfix dies (yes ALL of them, all the way back to the doyen, the Spitfire IX) which had been left to rust in a warehouse in France. They decided they could resurrect the company, but they needed a killer business plan to create a niche in the Playstation generation. They went to the BBC and asked for a licence to release Doctor Who and the Tardis in time for Christmas 2007. BBC would not approve the prototype castings and dragged their feet and dragged their feet. All plastic kits are manufactured in China today, so Airfix had to go to a manufacturer with only a concept, and had to hawk the boxes around toy store to convince them to stock them for Christmas with literally just the boxes. The programme finished bang up to date and showed a single delivery of 2000 Doctor Who kits on the shelf in a single shop (it might have been Hamleys). There would be no more this side of Christmas. Then last Sunday I went into town and there in a craft shop I saw a Doctor Who and the Tardis construction kit ... made by the BBC. No wonder they dragged their feet to the point of bankrupting the renascent Airfix: they wanted it all for themselves. That sort of corporate malpractice makes me mad.

M18 tank destroyer, right? Brings back memories of one of my first plastic kit (shall we say "total") conversions. How to build an M18 from an Airfix Leopard 1 running gear.

lol ouch!!!

Yes, it's the cutaway. But it was interesting that they cut away the side that hadn't been smacked by three AP rounds. I also found it disappointing that, viewed from the gallery above, all the vision equipment and hatch covers were absent and boarded up. You can't have everything I suppose.

I tried googling for 39 (present in the name of each picture) and Lt Gen Moorshead. Easing the search to "Gen Moorshead" I eventually got to this: http://boards.historychannel.com/thread.jspa?threadID=300003251&messageID=300049631 on the History Channel website (see Jack, History Channel even has a website ;o) It includes the line: Not much help but the best I could get.

I guess I have just gone along with what I have read elsewhere by people who went there. While we were still using 60-year-old Brownings, the rest of the army were using GPMGs. I bow to your superior knowledge.

Baz, Did you not do Vogelsang in March 1982? (I remember it fondly: my firstborn was conceived about the time I was "away at Vogelsang" - it's a long story.) 15/19H were detailed to spend two weeks at the infamous Vogelsang training area high in the Eiffel Mountains not a million miles from Remagen. We were to be administration regiment, running the ranges, providing radio cover, etc while other units trained (hard). There was plenty of slack as it didn't take a regiment to run the place, so we had one duty squadron each day, leaving the others to go out and make use of the facilites. There was a range where we could crawl under barbed wire while a line of GPMGs fired over our heads. There was an infantry battle run which was a cross between a rifle range and an assault course where they could use attack using live rounds and through cover. On that day I was on duty and I spent the day at the side of our former RSM (Big Lou) whom I had driven when he was RSM. I was up and down the range with a UK/PRC351 on my back all day long. Give him his due. When a member of the squadron asked Lou how come I had a cushy job while they were getting beasted, he didn't me to explain how many times I had run up and down the range that day. There was an anti-tank range. There was an RAOC unit on that range one day while I was duty operator. They were firing M72 66m one-shot anti-tank rockets. One guy managed to fore his without having properly locked his weapon open. Seconds after he blew his arm off, we were getting a NoDuff message demanding Starlight (Medic) assistance. One day our squadron was rounded up into four tonners and we journeyed across to the bluff overlooking the bridge at Remagen where a US recce unit had stumbled upon the intact bridge and initiated a quick divisional attack to capture it in a masterpiece of the art of recce. The then current RSM (JC) took great delight in lecturing us in the right way to reconnoitre. Then we were transported down to the remnants of the bridge itself and lectured in how the demolition commander ordered the bridge blown but, despite rising 6" in the air, settled back on its foundations. He was shot. The whole army passed over the bridge and later, with the bridgehead secured, the damaged bridge collapsed.

I'd agree with that. The 77mm was essentially a 17pdr anyway AFAIK, and like I say, the holes were BIG. Though on reflection maybe no more than 3" - I didn't have a ruler with me. ;o)

Course it did. Just call me Dick for short.