True, but then the whole of the military was a target in NI. Bruggen was a different type of war situation, it may have been peacetime but it involved live buckets of instant sunshine, hence the musket and ammo....

Nutty, Peace time rules in a combat situation? How quaint a notion. Did Quartermaster Edward Bloomfield have offspring serving in the Army and RAF during those times? Asking for a friend!:ugh:

It got me that if anyone tried to climb the fence we had to give a warning in English before opening fire, the fact that they possibly couldn’t understand the language was tough. The military in Germany was also targets of the IRA SAS, there were several attacks.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ir...&client=safari

We had our own stupid Rules that had tragic results....Sentries with unloaded weapons....Beirut Airport....261 Dead.

Yes, I know - did my tour out there during those times - cars with BFG registration plates were nice easy targets, too, until the authorities decided too many innocent dependents had been murdered and issued local plates.

Shy, We all had the worries of loosing rounds at a months pay each. M*** L****** lost a 9mm round but didn't get fined, as we all knew where it was! It had fallen from the top of the arming pit between the pit and the armoury wall and if you got real close to the wall you could see it. I guess it was still there when we all pulled out and left the place to the AAC. I had a scare, when I used to keep my mag in my webbing holster. As we were flying around one day I looked down and there was a round on the sill. I had worn a hole at the bottom of my holster and it had dropped out! Lesson learned, I kept them in my top pocket ever after.

Thread creep, apocryphal story went about in NI... SLR user (hopefully not) back at the armoury, instead of removing the rounds like a normal person, cocked the weapon 20 times into the sand and collected them from there! Any truth?

My loaded mag of 20 went in my upper left pocket, and I think I kept my pistol mag in the gun? Time, fading memories etc. I wore a shoulder holster (a nice one, not the hole in the bottom one), 'cos I didn't want to take the wrong belt off inadvertently at the wrong time!

CG

Similar situation at Laarbruch where the emphasis was on Blue, Black and Pink zones containing said buckets of sunshine before the IRA got busy in Europe. The twist there was that, because I lived in a quarter on camp, I had to take my gun home with me and place it in the rifle rack there! That drew some comment from wife and in-laws!

I kept my loaded 9mm mag in the pistol; I had a leather holster so it was safe enough. I was slim hipped enough to wear it on a waist belt whilst sitting in the armoured seat - others couldn't!. Same with the SA-80. Can't recall where I kept the second mag for that one but it was at immediate readiness.

I remember "Sid" B****er panicking having dropped and lost a round outside the armoury, only to be hugely relieved when he found it lurking in the fabric surround of his flying suit knee-pad.

Odd thing....I was posted from a Unit up north where we were fighting Main Force NVA Divisions.....to down near Saigon where most of the contacts were with VC units....and upon arrival I had an M-16 and a 12 gauge Pump Shotgun.....with a fair bit of ammo for each....and the question asked was....."what are doing with those?".

The natural response was "shoot at folks sometimes.....what else would I do with them?".

Things were a bit more relaxed up north it would seem but then it was far more a real live shooting war up there.

Things changed later on when the Main Force NVA Units began to show up in the Cambodia Border areas.

Seems a lot of agro over a single Round of Ammo during your time.

But then when you are shooting up Thousands of Rounds in a day.....and hitting the FARP Ammo Resupply Point and helping yourself to what you needed....a single Round became quite insignificant.

I preferred calling in 105/155/ and 8 inch Artillery fire missions instead of just pattering back with some 7.62 MG Rounds......as the HE Rounds had more effective than did the Military Ball MG Ammo did.

Did my APWT on the HK53 on arrival in theatre, puzzled to find I'd only fired 19 rounds. On checking my beret where I'd put the rounds before loading the mag I found the missing item, and having already made a declaration that I had none in my possession, and that such an item might have a value to me later in my tour, it went into a pocket.

All to do with politics. We were fighting a civil war under peacetime rules and the lawyers were our main enemies.

Back in 1979 I was involved in preparing to move 230Sqn from Odiham to Gutersloh. As this meant dividing all Puma spares and role equipment in half we carried out a full fleet wide inventory check of Puma kit; something not done for some time as these checks were normally only carried out on individual aircraft rather than the whole force. Unsurprisingly this revealed huge shortages of role equipment including nearly all the gun mounts and pintles. Due to the scale and cost of these losses the supply management branch insisted that we justified all the items that were needed and I ended up making a visit to the SH staff in MOD to try and get the necessary funding. Interestingly, when it came to the gun mounts and pintles I was advised that guns would never be fitted to the Puma and MOD would not support the purchase of replacements!

Brings back memories of the famous "ammunition amnesty" in the late 80s when an entire arsenal appeared.