(Pull up a Sandbag and Swing that Lantern boys).
by
Graham 'Nelly' Nellist
It was the night before we left Cyprus, the six man 'grot' had been prepared for CO's Rounds all was spick and spam with a highly buffed wooden floor. We all then set off for a final run ashore, a mega one it was too. Next morning alarm clocks sounded at 0600 to give us time to collect our bedding for returning it to stores. Next second, (louder than the loudest alarm clock) Mne Richy 'Jan' Harris bellows. "What the F***?". It soon became apparent that someone during the night had, ' quite innocently', mistook his pit for the heads. " who the hell swamped on me?" he shouts, the five room mates reassured him that they were not to blame. Suddenly 'Jan' spots footprints in the highly buffed floor burned in with pure amonia, he follows them back to the 'pit' of his bezzy oppoe, ME!!! All the lads frantically mucked in re polishing the grots ruined floor while 'Jan' desperatly covered his soggy matress in foo foo dust in hope he never got charged for the cleaning of it when he handed it in shortly after.
I must add he got away with it.
by
S. Flanigan
(Names in the story changed by request of author)
41 Cdo Support Coy was ordered to prevent an Orange March at the opening of Rev. Ian Paisley's new church. Weighed down with all the gunf the 'pongo's' ordered we carry, (Gas masks, banners and a Bugler, (Good ol' sticks), all this and prancing around in a hollow square - damn we looked stupid.
When the crowd marched toward us (they did it better than us), Major 'W' ordered me to display the banner. Not being able to see a thing through the damn gas mask I eventually unfurled the banner.
"WE ARE ABOUT TO OPEN FIRE" it read. On marched the Orange marchers (maybe they could't read), and we had to do a hasty march to the rear at a sprint.
When I wiped the sweat out of my eyes I looked up to see Noddy 'B' standing alone in the center of the road with 10,000 Orangemen marching down on him. Noddy looked ahead, looked left, looked right and finally behind him.
We were about a quater of a mile away gasping for breath, getting ourselves ready to go and pull Noddy out of the mire. Nonchently, he turned back to the approaching horde, stood casually at ease, cradled his weapon in his squat arms, dangled his respirator between his little legs and took out his stick. Just like Moses he waved his magic wand in front of him and 5000 men went to his left and the other 5000 to his right. The whole parade marched quietly past him down both sides of the road. Later I asked him what had happened?.
"Not much" he said. ..................."But How?"
by
T (Charlie) Charles
Remember the trip to Canada? (I think it was '76 or maybe '75}, 23 hours in a Hercules with 1 hour at Lyneham. I thought my backside had healed over, anyway, Mortar Troop amd others were in a tented camp miles from anywhere.
Not a lot to do really, play 'chase the pisser' and drink Moosehead. As always seems to happen when Royal is left to his own devices, we improvised with the materials available. What did we make? Well we, (and I'm sure it was Paddy Mulligan), worked out that if you got hold of the camp beds, left the legs in, but seperated in to halves, you could stick your arms in to both halves and you had a pair of wings. (With me so far)?
We all thought this was ace and all dived to our beds to follow in the great Mulligans steps.
I don't know how many of us there were, but it was certainly a squadron's worth. After a successful sortie by a test pilot it was now a natural progression to have formation flying, (apologies to the Red Arrows .....but we were tops). We 'flew' everywhere aroud the camp. We even had our own ground crew, air traffic controllers etc.
A short distance down the hill from where Mortar Troop were camped, the AE's had erected a few showers, It was decided that we would go for a shower in formation, and of course we had to keep an eye out for Jerry.....NEVER LEAVE YOUR WINGMAN.
We landed with the elegance and aplomb of seasoned veterans and neatly parked the beds, (sorry planes), on the tarmac ready for a quick getaway in case the order to 'scramble' came.
The RSM at this stage was walking past..........
RSM; "Cpl Mulligan.. what the **** is this ****?????"
Paddy; "They're ours sir"
RSM; "How did they get here????"
Paddy; "We flew them sir"
Most of us didn't hear the rest as we scrambled to meet the 'Hun in the Sun'
Any guys out there remember this??