What is your earliest military vehicle memory?

[Davie]

I have been looking through some slides belonging to my Dad and found this. It is of me, in 1968, aged about five, about to be taken to school in an army Hillman Husky! I can remember two things about this car, once while turning right the passenger door flew open, I don't know why I didn't shoot out onto the road in those pre seatbelt days. The other thing I remember is, we usually took a back road where there was a hump back bridge, I don't know if Dad ever got the wheels off the ground, but it felt like it!

I also remember a morris traveller with holes in the floor, various land-rovers, minis, and latterly an escort mk2 and a chevette. Not very glamourous, but Dad was a Chaplain and didn't get to play with big toys. So, lets hear everyone elses earliest memories of green machines.

 

 

Davie

[Degsy]

The winter of 1946/47, Diamond T 980/1s working in tandem with a large 'V'

snowplough attached to the leading vehicle. I was nearly 4 years old and have hankered after one ever since. I have driven a huge variety of vehicles over the years but sadly never a Diamond. :cry: :-)

[sirhc]

I have this photo of my brother and myself in a Fox. I actually remember playing in this Fox and I'm fairly sure this was at Beltring in 1992.

 

Chris

[lightweight]

My Dad was a REME SSGT. When I was a kid, as far as I was concerned, he personally owned every vehicle painted green! :-D

[Tony B]

Belive it or not a ex British army swb FFR series 2a painted in the gold and black Benson & Hedges livery. We had it at the stables in jersey it was used by the Jersey Horse racing club with matching trailer. I'd just passed my test. there had been the odd Champ used as a beach boat tug, but the landy was the first on the road. It made a quick apperance, in grey in the film Neither the Sea nor the Sand. Don't know what happned to it though.

[ArtistsRifles]

early 1960's - maybe '62 or '63 - Dad popping home enroute from an exercise with X Para in an Austin Champ..........

[Snapper]

I have dim recollection of a Scammell Pioneer coming down our street when I was tiny. I had the Matchbox version.Otherwise it was the Schoolboys Exhibition at the Olympia in 1968. I sat in a Ferret and got to hold a Sterling. There was also a Mechano Empire State building which seemed huge and a cabinet that included all the major football trophies held in England at that time including the World Cup. I was a nine year old in paradise.

[Rick W]

Going to Bovingdon 30 odd years ago , when the collection was just a line of tanks in a warehouse!

[rgb]

Blackgang Chine, Isle of Wight. they had a fox/ferret/dingo sort of thing set in concrete. (I was 6 so forgive me for not knowing ). It was apparently lost into the sea during a landslide....

 

Richard

[Poptopshed]

It was a Ferret that used to be stored in a shed that i used to play in when i was about 5. Can remember climbing all over this weird car in a gloom of the shed and getting inside the turret which seemed huge in the darkness. Still fancy one now and i wonder what happened to it when the shed got knocked down. :?

[Dakman]

I remember in the mid-fifties standing on our front gate and watching the re-manufactured QL's and Hippos on road-test from Desborough Engineering, near High Wycombe, and being absolutely fascinated watching the prop-shafts turning, and the unmistakable sounds of these vehicles which has been with me ever since. A friend of mine's father worked there, and one Saturday we were let loose in a whole yard full of them, even if we had to be lifted up into the cabs!

 

To cap it all, I got a ride in a Matador at the local TA Open Day. Now THAT noise really is something else, and led to my first MV being a Mat in 1989.

[Jolly Jeeper]

Hard to remember exactly - one of the earliest (c1969/70) was seeing a real AEC Matador (timber tractor) and realising that it was a real version of the Airfix models (1:72nd scale Matador and 5.5in gun) that I had several of at home!

 

Soon afterwards, as we went caravanning I saw a red Matador wrecker at a garage near Leek in Derbyshire - got my Dad to stop so I could photograph it with my Instamatic.

 

Another from the same era was like Rick's above; Mum and Dad took me to the Tank Museum at Bovvy when it was just rows of tanks. It was the Airfix thing again - a real Sherman, a real Panzer IV etc.

 

JC

[Nick Johns]

My Mother always reckon my interest in military vehicles was something to do with whilst heavily pregnant with me she got a lift home in my uncles Morris armoured car that he used regularly as a car, apparently it was very difficult for her to get out through the small armoured door....she gave birth to me the next day.....was nearly born in an armoured car....... :whistle:

[Nick Johns]

And here is a pic of the Morris, which I susequently remember playing in, and Uncles DUKW

[Davie]

What a strange looking beastie. I don't think i've seen one of them before. Is it still around?

[Nick Johns]

It is a Morris Commercial light reconnaisance car base on 15cwt 4x4 truck parts, rear engined, fairly rare now, there is one at Duxford. My Uncle had removed the turret and cut larger windows into it. It does still survive having been restored, last I heard in was in the Norfolk area

[Tony B]

My Mother always reckon my interest in military vehicles was something to do with whilst heavily pregnant with me she got a lift home in my uncles Morris armoured car that he used regularly as a car, apparently it was very difficult for her to get out through the small armoured door....she gave birth to me the next day.....was nearly born in an armoured car....... :whistle:

 

Oh hell my son has no chance. :cry: He was born 3 months prem, missed being born on the front seat of a Land Rover by 10 minutes!

[MARTIN CROSS]

Hi

I used to live just around the corner from Peter Gray's motorcycle shop and remember, at age 5,seeing military Harleys. He kept his bigger vehicles in a railway yard near my Gran so the green disease got me very early!

Martin

[Larry Hayward]

My earliest memory of MVs must have been in 1961/62 when at a small age I went for a wonder all on my own, near RAF Upavon were my father was stationed and was given a lift home by some soldiers in a Morris C8 FAT. I remember being scared to touch what I thought was a bomb on the back seat which in fact was a WD issue fire extinguisher!

 

Souch inoscence in those days, they were probably TA soldiers, who saw me as just a young child walking along the road and though it would be best if they took me back home to my mum!

[ashley]

Hi all,

similar to others my early days was spent (up till i was 16 yrs old ) in army life and seeing all types of vehicles from ww2 types and early fifties vehicles.

 

My earliest hands on with a military vehicle was in 1972 (at 13) as my father was in NI the regt. wanted to have a day for all the children, most were content with climbing over vehicles trying on uniforms etc, but with my brother and two others we asked to actually drive some vehicles.

 

Some weeks later we were at a training ground called Achmer (one of Germanys first jet fighter bases) where we did circits of humps and bumps in an old 10 ton GS wagon,

(read Hippo) never getting out of first gear for what seemed like hours.

 

Then smaller trucks intill we took turns in a landrover, and to finish a 432.

A fantistic week end and one i shall never forget.

 

Ashley

[Rick W]

It is a Morris Commercial light reconnaisance car base on 15cwt 4x4 truck parts, rear engined, fairly rare now, there is one at Duxford. My Uncle had removed the turret and cut larger windows into it. It does still survive having been restored, last I heard in was in the Norfolk area

 

Couple at Bov. , one fully restored in the museum, one waiting. Would love to get my hands on one of them. Very intersting use, mainly from what I can gather, raiding Luftwaffe airfields. One day...maybe...

[mcspool]

Five years old, playing in a derelict jeep sitting by the side of the road in Cyprus.

Mixed with vivid memories of British soldiers patrolling the streets in Land Rovers.

Mum sewed me a camouflage uniform, one day I got a ride as a boy soldier.

Never lost the green fever. . . .

 

Hanno

[Enigma]

Must have been around 1977, hardly remember it.

There were 2 jeeps sitting next to the riverdyke, a few miles from my home.

Guess they didn't drive anymore.

[AlienFTM]

In 1973 I applied to RCB. Having passed PV, I was invited to the RAC Training Regiment at Catterick (Scots DG IIRC) for a spot of pre-RCB training. We were given a walk around the hangars. I was practically wetting myself at the prospect of meeting a Chieftain, but the first thing we were shown was little bigger than a LWB Land Rover in each of the three dimensions, aluminium-armoured and powered by the engine out of a Jaguar XK420 sports car. I was entirely unimpressed.

 

Little did I know that when eventually I did join the Royal Armoured Corps, my regiment would have forsaken tanks for the foreseeable future and I would spend seven years in an armoured recce regiment equipped with Scorpions.

[abn deuce]

while its not my earliest memory I m sure it will be these kids and those watching the parade

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