Aah, the old two-burner cooker eh ? The hours I must've spent, poking bits of D10 into the jets, trying to get the bloody thing working properly !
I notice those lads are wearing the old tank suits. A lot liked them but I found it was like wearing a strait jacket. Preferred the parka meself.

Ah the hours spent burying our compo tins........................and then.

When you were either on 'wirely watch' or 'on stag' in the early hours...........you heard the faint rustling of the wild boar digging all the tins back up !

Always seemed to be moving in your direction.

My word it was frightening hearing all the racket the wild boar made, rattling rustling and grunting, and they weren't small buggers either.

Some time in the 60's ( I think 68/69) in CFB Gagetown a British unit was there for summer exercises with the Canadians. Well the British unit captured a Van Doo who had 5 live rounds in his mag on his FN. Lordie they thought, these French Canadians play for real. Eventually it was sorted out. The man with the 5 live rounds (ball) was the duty hunter for his platoon,if a deer were spotted. Apparently this had to be true as I read it in the Sentinel, the Forces magazine.

And not so far from home.......... Mate & I shunned physical activity & Wednesday afternoons chasing around the sports field after balls of various shapes & sizes. We had dispensation to get the bikes out & head off to Trg. Area A, outside Osnabruck around the site of the old Luftwaffe airfield at Achmer. Not that it wasn't physically demanding....... chucking 300 lbs or so of Matchless about to practice for the regt trials team in surrounding woodland had you sweating at times. What we didn't know was that the Garrison had granted the local boar hunting Jagerverein access to the same patch on Wednesdays. I don't think we were actually shot at, though the Brits weren't everyone's favourites in the 1950's, but we had a close encounter with a huge porker which crashed through the trees in front of us. We stuck to the open area of the old Flugplatz after that.

Ah, sports afternoon.
Being REME we had a raft of exc...reasons not to partake.
Although, when attached to 9/12 Lancers, we in LAD HQ would quite often organise a game of Murder Ball on a patch of waste ground opposite the Wksp building.
Great fun.

Not much to do with "Good Old Roast" ( but when has that been necessary ?) except that it's noon. Sunday, I don't eat until the BBQ to which I'm invited kicks off in a couple of hours,......... So looking back on old posts & pics I've found one relating to the previous about wild boar etc & Trg Area A outside Osnabruck. A bit hazy, but there was no auto-focus with the plate tackle or similar we had........ Shows Jim Abbot & Cartav mud hopping on the remains of the old airfield. It's flattened down now, the old runways on which the sappers had played with dem charges & camouflets have been turned into grass on which a gliding club operated more recently. The remains of the admin buildings beside the road running by the canal can just be made out behind the riders........ It's a Luftwaffe memorial now.

Special about the day these pics were taken is that I was chugging along over the top of the mound, scraping through undergrowth, when a pit, or an old slit trench, opened up before me. In the bottom was a belt of around 50 20mm cannon shells, all live. Feet sought the sides of the pit, bike went in, I jumped sideways. With the possibility that leaking MT70 & hot exhaust might result in something even more exciting, we waited around before taking a chance and dragging the Matchless out, marked the spot & went back home to get info sent off to the UXB boys.

[quote Special about the day these pics were taken is that I was chugging along over the top of the mound, scraping through undergrowth, when a pit, or an old slit trench, opened up before me. In the bottom was a belt of around 50 20mm cannon shells, all live. Feet sought the sides of the pit, bike went in, I jumped sideways. With the possibility that leaking MT70 & hot exhaust might result in something even more exciting, we waited around before taking a chance and dragging the Matchless out, marked the spot & went back home to get info sent off to the UXB boys.[/quote]

Geeze, that had to tighten up the old pucker string.