Thats told me then....

Well I try! Did not have much contact with you to be honest

A lot of the old stuff was either sold off with the guns or deep sea dumped in the late 70's & 80's But still saw old stock in Germany and in UK Depots for all the years of my service 1968-1993

I am good friends with the Director of the RCOC Museum in Montréal,

This is slightly off beam, but when they were closing part of the depot at Didcot in the mid 60s there were sheds with first WW horse shoes and tent pegs.

In the 70s at Yardley Chase they were still repacking RDX and other HE from WW2. The mice had eaten into the boxes. I wonder what happened to all that stuff

I don't know about the WWII stuff but as Hardrations points out, the Army doesn't let go of anything that goes bang. I do know, however, that all the stuff the Canadians had 'up north' prior to the move to Lahr (another brilliant decision by DND!!!) was either packed and sent down there or attempted to be sold to you guys, but your powers-that-be didn't want it, or at least not at the excellent price that was being asked for it, so much of it ended up as kindling, sad to say.

Munitions and such no doubt got sent to Lahr and Baden-Baden or maybe some of it ended up with German military. If it did, wouldn't that be a dictionary definition of "ironic?"

As far as I know all the Canadian ammuntion was moved to a new [maybe not in build] depot near Lahr. By the early 70's the British used 120mm Tank and the Canadians & Americans 105mm Tank. So much for NATO compatability! but most of everything else was still the same.

It took the British the best part of 25 years to sort out it's WWII stocks, and also handle the run down of depots both in the UK & BAOR and some ammuntion stocks were moved more than once before being sent to the bottom of the Atlantic.

Another push came in the early 90's with BAOR rundown and rationlisation. A lot of BAOR 'War stock' was used during the first Gulf war and never replaced!

This rationlisation must have happened to all NATO Nations, with a changing role in the 90's & 2000's

Mike- Your mention of "NATO compatibility" brought a smile to my aged face as does the mention of "NATO Forces".

As a soldier you were obviously nearer to the real military world than I was. But I had a little insight into NATO by attending meetings on POL matters in NATO HQ Brussels.

It was a great privilege but as for compatibility-forget it! The Brits went their way, the Yanks another, and as for the French-well! Don't get me wrong, all great guys doing the best for their nation but compatibility, I do'nt think so.

Now-somebody prove me wrong

I have to agree with you Alan.

STANAGS is one thing, but Petrol is Petrol, and France did not play with the rest of NATO that much anyway.

At the end of the day a 7.62x51mm rimless round fired out of all rifles, and yet again the Yanks adopted the 5.56x45mm round forcing it to be the 2nd standard! Of course the UK now use this round in the SA80 Weapon System, as do all other countries in NATO, even Poland!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5.56x45mm_NATO

Many examples exist, and in Afghanistan today Canadian Ammunition is being used by British Forces, not because it is 'NATO Standard' which it is, but because they have the capacity to supply it. Particular .50" HMG ammo.

Growing up army is, of course, a totally different breed of cat than being army so I wasn't that aware of the munitions end of things at all. But having said that, somewhere along the way I did manage to pick up the disparity between "NATO compatibility" and the reality of that (probably through dinner conversations with my dad who was Ordnance Corp after all and so "into" all that sort of thing...he supplied it all,so he knew).

I do remember him going on about stuff re the Americans, even though we weren't that close to the American zone down around Frankfurt etc. We did have a small American missile detachment at Soest, however. They had little, if anything, to do with us on the supply end of things; everything they got was "American".

I did hear about the French military's penchant for "going their own way" and the attendant lack of respect from other "NATO Forces" for doing so. Not that the French would care....LOL

Sort of the same thing with the Belgiques (Belgians)...they were kicking around as part of NATO as well but there was virtually zero interaction between them and us even though their Married Quarters were often close to our own. In Soest, for instance, there were Belgique Married Quarters right across Hiddingser Weg from the Canadian PMQs, as close to us as any of the other Canadian PMQs would be to each other, and yet none of us kids ever interacted with Belgique kids, none of the soldiers interacted with ours, and certainly none of the families did. The only interaction was you'd periodically see Belgique families shopping at the CANEX store and over on the other side of the Soest PMQs, across Arnsberger Strasse, was the Belgique Officer's Club that occasionally hosted bi-national events but I don't recall our going to any.

Some of the Francophone families or members of French/Quebecois regiments did because there was a linguistic link there (by and large. Belgium deals with the issues of bilingualism between Walloon (French) and Flemish all the time, much as Canada, especially Eastern Canada, does between Francophone and Anglophone).

Much of if not all. Canadian Wartime ammunition was still stored up north after we moved down to Lahr. I found this out after the Yom Kipper war. The IDF were running short of ammo so the Yanks supplied them with stocks from Germany. Our training ammo was stored under yank control, so our ammo ended up going to the IDF. How'd I find this out? Well I was with HQ's & Sigs 4 CMBG and on asking why our live firing training was delayed, was informed of the reasons above. They were getting ammunition from our war time stock from up north in the BOAR area. I was also informed that technically we were still part of BOAR. I know we still drove on a BOAR drivers license. All so we were still allotted training time on the ranges in the BOAR. The yanks would only give the tanks and arty night times to fire. So the guns and tanks were trained up north to get day time firing times. Go figure. If old King Pierre could find a way to jerk the Canadian Forces around, he did.

When I was stationed at CAD Kineton in the UK we used to train IDF Officers at the Army School of Ammunition and held stocks of 105mm Tank and other natures on 'option for sale' to the IDF.

This was refurbished Centurion Tank stock since we had flogged them the tanks when the Chieftain Mark 1 came into service.

We also held stocks for Arab nations as well! so would have a frantic weekend getting the school ready if it was a hot changeover from one nation to one they were not so friendly with.

Canadian ATO's are still trained at Kineton by the way.

One of my best detachments was to BATUS where we had a training area the size of Wales...

Mike-Did you have any connections with Yardley Chase when you were at Kineton?

Knew of it Alan, but never visited! It was a Ministry of Supply Ammunition Depot for storing finished goods from the 'Royal Ordnance Factories' and was civil manned.

Area is now an Army Training Area for the ACF/ATC/TA