Laarbruch Maxeval circa 1986
I took some TA reinforcements for the RIC, including three girls, and this lead to a whole raft of incidents because OC RIC at the time was the original MCP who could not understand that as far as the Army was concerned they were three JNCOs - sex was immaterial. I must point out that we were all armed win 9.0mm Brownings complete with blank ammunition. Towards the end of the exercise I had to send one of the girls across to RIC alternate and on the way she passed a HAS in which was a Tornado with stagings and people around the cockpit. On asking why our heroine was told that the crew had gone LMF and were not going to bomb innocent civilians. Her response was to to go up the ladder past various senior officers. On arrival at the cockpit the following exchange took place: JNCO: "Are you going to fly the mission?" Pilot: "No"; JNCO draws pistol, cycles round into breech and fires at pilot, turns and looks at assembled company: "Well dig him out and put a new one in." and then disappears on original mission. Needless to say before she returned to the original location, I had had an interesting conversation with the Staish about her actions. The only quick excuse that came to mind was that she was a Geordie!