I have the Panda M-1 set aside for my tank.
More Hohenfels: July 1985, D-33 off the trail. Almost rolled over. Recovery took 2 days and multiple M-88s. D-33 has mud camo scheme.
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Some of those areas of Hohenfels look familiar… 
Great photos there!
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German Air Base Lahr 1985. My tank was selected for the NATO display and demonstration along with other NATO vehicles. We were transported by HETT from Schweinfurt. When we unloaded and all the NATO vehicles were set up in column my tank was lead vehicle. A Canadian Major pulled up in Mercedes Benz that was our escort to the display area. I was in the drivers hole and he asked me “how fast should I drive?”. I asked how fast can he go?. He proceeded to take off, but I was able to keep up around 60 MPH. The rest of the vehicles were all straggling way back. It’s funny to think about it now.
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Nice photo of some of the ruins. I only got the one pic of the church. Its great seeing some of this stuff again!
Ken
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Thanks! Sure brings back some memories.
Thanks for these pics. Love seeing Conn again. Last time I was there was when I left in 92.
That’s when I left, Oct 92.
Top photo while the camouflage is really effective. Now I can see why they came up with some of the colors that they did.
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Man, I miss those days.
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How come, when we were in, we were cursing every single day and counting down to separation…, now, we all “miss those days”?
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Selective memory, we want to remember the good days and block out the bad. Also as we got older we don’t sweat the small things that pissed us off as young men. Just my guess.
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I’ve been a tad busy lately and have only just discovered this thread. I was somewhat disenchanted with the Army in the mid-80s and was going to sign off. We had to go on exercise (this was Brigade HQ) and it was the usual punishing round of move, set up, break down, move and so on.
About mid-way through we were on Thetford training area (I think) and it had been an exhausting night; an operation order had to be typed up, run off and distributed (this was the mid-80s) and though technically off-shift I stayed up to make sure it all went well. The Chief of Staff was a fierce taskmaster and one couldn’t afford to get it wrong the paperwork committing men to battle has to be accurate and timely delivered.
We’d also endured a gas attack; I should just explain that although the use of CS gas was technically confined to training in barracks whenever we deployed in woods and forests, if they were suitably isolated, the NBC Instructor SNCO would be authorised to gas us all as he saw fit. Come the dawn we all “Stood to” to await any attack; were subsequently stood down and were allowed to go and get breakfast. We had centralised messing so benefited from the efforts of the Army Catering Corps - it would have been nonsensical as a formation HQ to be cooking individually using 24-hour ration packs.
So off I went accompanied by one of my Corporals to the cookhouse tent some 2 kms distant. It was getting quite light. As we left the HQ I could still hear the crackle of the radios and the clipped responses. It had been raining during the night; we were still in NBC kit although not masked up, so amidst the residual tang and taste of CS gas, the sourness of too many coffees and the eye-stinging fatigue, on we trudged.
I sensed the dripping of rain from the fir trees, the distant hum of the generators, and as we came nearer to the cookhouse the roar of the cooks’ burners and the muffled clank of mess tins and the muted conversation of officers and soldiers alike.
I paused for a moment, and thought, “God, I love all this!”
(Needless to say I didn’t sign off)
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Nice try, Ryan, to not say the obvious: We were-unlike now- young…
Cheers,
Angel
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I seriously do miss my time in what I class as the mainstream army, the HCR… They were the best, even the crap times were not that bad and it made me better in the end… I wouldn’t change a second of it 
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Although at the time I moaned about being away on op deployments, looking back I’ve had some really good times. We did things civilians would pay serious money to do and experienced life lived at a furious pace at times, completing UN tours, NATO tours and countless exercises. Favourites have always been the tours in command of a wagon and finally as a Troop Leader. Bosnia in '94 brings back good memories Iraq in 2003 the same, especially when I was in Baghdad for around a month. Can’t remember which US troops were there at the time but we were woken each morning by helicopters patrolling the Tigris past our compound in the Green Zone. 2nd pic was inspiration for my Scimitar build.
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Man, ain’t that the truth? I’ve been lucky enough to visit the ancient ruins of Old Zimbabwe, climb a Mayan temple in Mexico (Chichenitza), visit the Queen of Sheba’s Bath in Oman, the Ziggurat at Ur, let alone the more European-based sites of interest and numerous battlefield tours (Normandy - meeting some of the players who were there, Ardennes, Calais, V2 Rocket Sites) and all courtesy of the British Army.
Truly, I really can’t complain.
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I distinctly remember the feeling of having cold rain drip down the side of my neck for 13 hours straight. And of sitting in a 120° track attempting to eat a dehydrated pork patty…But time heals all wounds and those experiences made me a better man. Stuff like that builds character. And you can’t explain it to someone who’s never been in. Lots of good times to counter the bad and I wouldn’t change a thing.
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Lol… In every wagon, either Comd, loader, or driver… There was always that one drip that would find it’s way in and it would be on your head, or on top of your leg as you sat in your seat lol… How I loved those 
But as you quite rightly alluded to, you have to have experienced that during a deployment or 2 or 3 week exercise to understand it …