Friday, 25 January 2013

It's Official

It's Official

Katy did do military service and I have photographs to prove it :-)

I found some old information that commented on an ambulance 63-KG-65 being featured in a book Land Rover Military Portfolio by Bob Morrison. This was Katy's military registration so I had to get a copy of that book. I ordered it, but the weather in the UK has been dreadful and delivery was delayed which was quite frustrating.

Anyway it arrived today and on page 90 and 91 there is an article reprinted from a Land Rover Owner International magazine in October 1992 (where it was pages 38-9 if you have an old copy and want to look).

It has pictures taken by Laurie Manton (former assistant editor of Soldier Magazine) and in the article there is a front view and a rear view of a Marshall's 127 Crash Rescue Ambulance and in both pictures the registration number is clear and it reads the magic 63-KG-65

I am so happy to have confirmation of this. I've always hoped I would find definitive evidence that she was a true working ambulance and I now have it

In the article it states that the 127's were being taken out there to replace the "worn out" 101's that had originally been deployed. The Article say that they were deployed to 24 Field Ambulance, RAMC whic accorring to one military history website was deployed 24/6/1992 to Croatia. Operation Hanwood 1992 Zagreb, Knin Split, Sarajevo and various other locations. The date is consistent with the questionable date on Katy's Military History card

In the picture you can definitely see she had no side window on the Passenger side which was one thing that had confused me about the camper conversion as the camper windows are smaller and I could not see a logical reason why to replace them. It is now clear it wasn't a replacement.

I know that inside Katy there were brave men (and women I don't know, but the officer in charge of the unit was a woman so I don't see why not) doing hard duties in an extremely difficult places, I'd like to think in looking after her and doing this research I've done a little to help keep the memory of that hard work alive  

There is a lot more in the book than this simple picture as there are a number of articles by Bob that talk about stockpiled 127's and political intervention from Paddy Ashdown to ger them released. There is clearly a lot more to learn about this

I would of course like to thank Bob and Laurie for taking the pictures and writing the article. without that I would still be in the dark on this

I've included only a small thumbnail of the article as I've not had permission to reprint it so it's not fair to put it in at a scale that would be usable under "fair use"


Update 11th April 2015, I now have permission to share the pictures from this article so here they are


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