SOXMIS STORIES

Hi Sonofsoxmis
Very nice plaques,if you ever sell them, please give me first offer.
I have about 10 RMP plaques in my collection,all from BAOR Germany
and 1 from Berlin.
And this

Hi Great Plaques, especially the old, very old 19 SP Platoon one, very collectable. I have seen the top one or one very similar and I own the rest myself and clearly much more. Such great times and such great memorabilia.
19 Support Platoon were part of 110, 113 & 114 over their time of operation. Strange thing was that no particular unit wanted responsibility for them because of the political climate.
I principle they were independant but, a provost company had to administrate their needs and, of course it made the unit members accountable to a provost RMP Unit.

Hi whitemicebaor
Can you send me some photos of your plaques.

I will be glad to but, it will take a while as they are boxed at present due to moving, soon as I am sorted I will drop you a line.

Our last quarter in BAOR backed ont the SOXMIS compound in Bunde !!

hi all, New member here. Intrested in this Soxmis forum, as I had the dubious honour of driving the Soxmis ration truck 73 to 74, while with 2 Div RCT at bunde. The russian commander there was I believe a rear admiral so I was told, had a nice uniform loads of gold braid etc.Always gave a cheery wave when I left their compound, probably glad I did'nt take the gate down, cor that was tight. still there you go.

Between LI Battalions change over in Lemgo, a SOXMIS team took the opportunity to park their car, bold as brass ,outside the main gate of Stornoway Barracks. Fortunately an alert guard from the incoming Bn, who was on guard duty,had been briefed back in the UK on SOXMIS.

Soxmis, in some form, was still active until complete withdrawal of Soviet troops from German soil after re-unification.

It was 1995 and they had several senior officer (field rank and above) whos task was to gain pertinent levels of intelligence of remaining Allied troops in Germany.

I had the dubious honour of being allocated as driver linguist - I had no viable intelligence training bar what we were given for deployment to the Balkans two years earlier - I think what tipped the balance when they were trawling was 1 I was a native German speaker 2 I had done secondary school Russian at school (a German Gesamtschule), had passed a short language course at Beaconsfield for Serbo Croat, could look very German if I wanted to - apparently I wasn't the trendiest dresser.... Oh, I had passed staff car driving courses which included defensive/offensive driving not that I needed either skill.

My trade had changed from Sup Spec to Driver Rad Op when we became the RLC so I was au fait with the vast majority of non ptarmigan signals equipment and had a crash course on some handsets we were using, had to be subject to DV Vetting (an experience in itself) and off I went with people far senior to myself.

The Russiand Intelligence gathering had actually increased in the few years prior to their official withdrawal in what can only be described as a last ditch attempt to gain knowledge on the ground.

I had the chance to converse with young Russian troops, buying a Makarov was 50 DM and an AK74 (not the AK47) was 100 DM. Other stuff was equally available, some which we 'procured' - manuals, documents etc - whilst I could speak Russian reading cyrillic was an entirely different matter as I was not an A grade student but I did realise we were buying, what was really, low grade info - theatre programmes from their thespian club through to cookhouse menus. But there were little bits of interesting info.

We also started to investigate dumping of fuels, contaminants, body parts!!! from their local morgue (they didn't think much of part cremating and dumping soldiers injured and died of injuries from excercises or general work - Russian H&S was not top of their agenda.

Enough said to say it was a great time for me and an entrance into a different part of the service (and it got me my degree also).

In the early 70's i was posted to HQ I BR Corps LAD. We used to work on what were termed SOXMIS chasers. they were white 3.3 vauxhall Victors (called Ventora's later). the great thing about them was that after you had fixed them, no matter how minor a job, it always warrented a road test on the Autobahn. And occassionally with lights and siren !!!

There's a little bit of Starsky & Hutch going on there...

LOL yes, I agree there Martin. Good photo though.

it was about that time martin.

why can i not post replys to the threads on this site , ginger

gingerjim wrote:

why can i not post replys to the threads on this site , ginger

Thought you just did?

Ten out of ten for observation Teabag...All that siggy training wasn`t wasted after all.

hah, another RAOC online member, Hi jim

Ah..That explains it.

Jesus Shelldrake, now you are writing in invisible ink ... even us Cipher guy's can't work that out ..

Len (Ciphers)

Yes I was one of those soldiers (green from the UK) issued with a SOXMIS card that I was told to carry at all times (think I still have it somewhere) and although I spent 5yrs in Germany, travelling to Munster and Dortmund quite a lot and based in Dusseldorf, I never did come across one
Les

I got a post card from the RMP's for spotting a soxmis car on the autobahn near Bielefeld in about 75

maverick52 wrote:

I got a post card from the RMP's for spotting a soxmis car on the autobahn near Bielefeld in about 75

I remember, in the 60s, a SOXMIS car was hanging around while we were playing with our Honest John missiles.
The car was one of those big Opels, a Diplomat or Admiral, one of them.
An indignant Major ran over to me and jumping into my Champ, ordered me to chase after the Soviets.
Yeah, right. Like a camel chasing a greyhound !

I do believe that the Boot was given over to a fuel tank, you would have had to POL a few times, Brum.

Spent about eleven years in Germany and in all that time saw only one SOXMIS car. It was a dark green five door Isuszu Trooper and passed me going in the opposite direction somewhere between Paderborn and Gutersloh. I jotted down as much detail as I could and reported it to the RAF Police at Gutersloh. A short while later I received a postcard from the RMP.

Waldfrieden is the name of the area that Maresfield Barracks (Home of 7 Signal Regiment) was built on. It is now a housing estate

recce83 wrote:

Anytime I saw them they were driving unmarked (except for the red and yellow SOXMIS plates) civilian pattern Opel Kapitan sedans (saloons if you will).

By the way, were Birdwood Barracks the Waldfrieden Kaserne that was the home of 7 Sigs in the '60s? I have a lot of memories about the place.

Rod