schliesser92

I suspect it is an off the shelf item fitted to several types of vehicle. Probably ties in with the power plant fitted. I used to deliver to the VDO factory outside Frankfurt - mostly returns for repair. Quite a lot of them, too!

I never liked working with the Yanks, although there were one or two good guys amongst them. In the early 70s, the main trouble was caused by some redneck asking why we were not in Nam. Usual reply was because the Viet Cong did not need our services! Instant fight! My then girlfriend, an NCO in the comcen at UKLF (Wilton) once drank a USMC Master Gunnery Sergeant under the table! She was drinking snakebites - from the wood! It was sort of grey with rats tails etc floating in it. (Her parents ran a country pub in the West Country - which was why she was my girlfriend!) We once had another US Army SNCO with us in Catterick in 1980. We took him to the Tan Hill Inn and fed him with Theakstons Old Peculiar. It was OK until some idiot left the door open. Eeh, the bugger were heavy, when we lifted him into the back of the Landy. happy days!

Gelnhausen (near Hanau) has been closed for years. The units in nearby Hanau (Air Defence ie Patriot) are scheduled to move to Baumholder next year. 3 Division and 8 Division no longer exist. The Rhein-Main area is now guest to 1st Armoured Division. This is headquartered in Wiesbaden.

Currently living in Germany, I visited my two locations where I was stationed. Churchill Barracks, Lippstadt seems to be in the process of being converted into flats etc. Caithness Barracks, Verden is now the Kreisverwaltung (county administration). My old workshop building (Mike Troop to us Signals types) is now a lawn! A lot of old US military installations in the Rhein-Main area are now deserted. Being barracks from the 1930s, most are been pulled down. One barracks in Frankfurt is now a Bundespolizei installation, the rest demolished to make way for housing estates, police headquarters and the new central fire station. The 97th General Hospital is now the US Consulate. It is sad to see them go, but reassuring that the land is being sensibly recycled.

there are various versions, they kept revising them. And of course in most of the languages used by foreign troops stationed in Germany. As far as I know, there were French, English and Dutch versions . I cannot recall any others.

It is not just vehicles and weapons! whilst I was serving (1967-80) as a radio-relay technician, the mainstay of the Bruin divisional and corps RR links was the SR C70 aka the Siemens FM12/800. Our teleprinters were Siemens T100R. The replacement for the RR kit was Triffid, in reality a licence-built AEG-Telefunken set. In steam radio circles the C15 (used by 3 Div and 244 Signal Squadron), was a Collins set (USA). The radar in Tornado GR aircraft is from Texas Instruments, the fire-control radar on Type 21 frigates was the Italian Selenia RTN-10. And it goes on, and on... For those not in the know, the MoD appoints a UK contractor for PDS work, so that the equipment remians supported, even if we eventually have a punch-up with the supplying nation.

Read somewhere that he had sadly passed away.

Aah! the drunken following of the appropopiate quad cable - remember it well!! I also remember deploying to a hill outside Hildesheim. It was a touch foggy. Following quad cables was necessary in broad daylight! It was three days before we realised where all our RF interference was coming from. The fog lifted and we found ourselves under a TV tower that was not on our maps!

probably referring to radar.

OK, OK some useless facts and figures. introduced into service in 1956 as the Lkw 0.25t gl (4x4) MUNGA, with a 3 cylinder, 2-stroke 897 ccm motor. They cost about DM8,600 each (then about 661 quid, there were 13DM to the pound then!). 5,376 were delivered to the Bundeswehr in about 2 years. In 1958, a further 19,785 vehicles were delivered, this time with the 975ccm 44bhp motor. At this time, the so-called F91/8 was introduced, which had a lengthed chassis and altered bodywork. 3,240 were delivered. Strangely enough, this vehicle was not widely exported, the only foreign users being the Netherlands Army and the British Berlin Brigade (29 Infantry Brigade). The Berlin vehicles were supplied as an offset to the stationing costs.

HRH The Duke of Edinburgh (aka Phil The Greek to us old sweats) said in a TV interview recently that the Armed Forces have the capability to turn ordinary people into extraordinary people. I think that must be true, as only extraordinary people could enjoy the crud that we endured! Sleeping under canvas in sub-zero temperatures, site guards, border patrols, weapon qualification (always it seemed in sub-zero temperatures!), the Gipsy Season (sometimes all-year round!), Germans (they could be a pain in the bum, sometimes). And there was the duty-free booze, tobacco products, private cars etc. Absolute hardship! I would do it again, though! They just have to get rid of that Mickey Mouse gun (SA80) and give me an SLR, a non-girlified Rover (srs III would do) and a good old SR C50/R236 station.And they would not have to give me a medal, either.

They did have diplomatic immunity! They were also GRU (Soviet Military Intelligence) officers. There were also missions with USAREUR (in Frankfurt) and with the French in Baden-Baden. we also had to be careful - there were occasions when heavy-handiness ended up with tit=for-tat reprisals with the NATO missions in Potsdam. Here is the card that our erstwhile foes carried -

Actually we sort of won because the GDR was bankrupt, and they had some civil unrest and the Soviet leadership did not want to intervene as they did in Czechoslovakia in 1967 - negative PR. The system just collapsed around their ears! A colleague of mine was a rupert in the NVA and told me that the NVA was ordered to remain in barracks at the end - the Politburo was busing sh*tting itself! Then the wall fell, and the rest is history.

I was on exercise with 22 Sigs with a radio-relay wagon and a TEV, to tie in a flanking US formation. We were parked in the edge of a wood near a village, and the Yanks managed to lay their connecting cable about 3 clicks past us (they could not find us!). After a major search, the RMP found us. There was a mass of kiddies bikes at the edge of the wood. The RMP reasoning was it was either us or someone doing a suspension test in their Beetle !! That is what happens when you are adequately cammed up and bury (illegally!) your gene exhausts. Add in the gung-ho Yanks and instant invisibility! For the uninitiated, here is a SOXMIS card -

I got that off a German documentary. They do a lot about the war (maybe because they lost it!). Knowing German efficiency from first hand, they probably did get it wrong. Even so, building ships (even glorified tramp steamers) in 24 or 48 hours was an achievement!

NO. There is a commerative medal that one can purchase, see - http://www.awardmedals.com/

The best bit was blocking in SOXMIS cars.They seemed to swarm around us like flies around a latrine on any major CPX/FTX ! I have probably got an entry in GRU intelligence files - photo taken of me in a watchtower whilst on site guard! That was another aspect of duty in BAOR - site guards and inner-German border patrols.

I never got the Airfix SLR, I had to make do with a realistic-looking, cap-firing Luger. My dad, then Permanent staff with a TA LtAD unit in Dunfermline, made me up a wooden Bren Gun, complete with folding bipod (always kept folding back when you least expected it) and interchangeable magazines. (that was back in 1958). In recent years, my son and heir (then 9 or 10) wanted a Winchester. it had to be a Winchester! He found one when we went on our annual cultural pilgrimage back to the UK. He developed this marvellous one-handed reloading action. Chuck Norris - watch out! The supplied bullets did not last long - fortunately, based on previous experience, I made a mould from one of the bullets and cast some out of soft material for him. He was the scourge of the local wildlife in our area!

A surviving trailer-mounted station is in the Royal Signals Museum in Blandford. It must be the only surviving C41 station in the UK. They were also used by Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, and knowing their financial state, are probably still in service (or replaced by Chinese crud).

It looks like the folded dipole from the Yagi Array No2, which formed part of SR C41/R222, a piece of VHF Radio-Relay equipment . So not Larkspur. It came in three elements , the folded dipole, slightly longer reflector, and shorter director. Frquency range was 50 - 100 MHz. It had to be adjusted for the approximate frequency. The antenna connection was the same as Larkspur. Incidentally, the inside of the coaxial connector was filled with beeswax. It was a pretty messy job changing connectors on a cable. Here are two arrays (without a full mast) on St Kilda 1969-71 and the beast it was attached to, SR C41/R222

At the time I was promoted and posted from 1 Div Sigs to 8 sigs (back in 1978), the regiment was on exercise. They ended up with 5 fatalities - and that was a signals unit! Being the sergeant with rear details, I had a fair bit of work to do with the sheriff (provost sergeant), padre and the care bears from SSAFA .

I think that the Yanks were building Liberty Ships at the rate of one a day before D-Day - again due to prefabrication and modular assembly.

At the time the Germans came to Castlemartin (in 1961), I was a spotty-faced youth living in Pembroke Dock. My father was BSM of 53 (Louisburg) Battery (part of 22 LtAD Regt RA) at the time. They arrived with M47s and M48s, supported by M88s, Mungas, Unimog S404B and Ford G398SAM 3-tonners. They came in an LST, and disembarked at Pembroke Dock.I believe that the few APCs they had at the time were HS30s (SPz1) and Hotchkiss (SPz2). I assume that the Iltis was a bog-standard machine and not one of those modified as emergency stretcher carriers, ie the medics runabout.

With the technology incorporated today ? Extremely doubtful!

These built in a day films were pure propaganda. They had everything laid out ready and available to accomplish this. The reality was different.