Also as a tankie you're *everyones* number one target.

(thats my regiments 'oo-rah' btw... in the old days it was 'wooooah mohammed' but we're not allowed that one anymore )

Gee i wonder why...

Any one of the US airforce on this forum? Just askin' because I think Warthogs are cool. But I'll admit I'm the very last person you want in the cockpit of an A-10. Hell. Id fire that gun dry on the runway, wait for it to get realoaded and then take of.

Also gonna point out that i haven't been in service. The Belgian army canceled the draft a few years before i would have to join. They probaly went:" Yeah, we don't want that Robin Graves kid running around and messing up our tanks here!"

Wooah mohammed was adopted by my regiment in WWII when we fought in the desert.

They would hear the local men call each other across the sands and its was usually that name.

It became an odd battlecry. They also liked it because the germans found it hard to copy if they used it as a 'challenge' as most germans struggled to pronounce it

It was our battlecry when we fought at Arnhem, we won two VCS (highest UK award for gallantry, like a medal of honour), only British battalion to win two in a single battle in WWII!

If any of you watch the show 'top gear' , Jeremy Clarkson, the presenter. His father in law won one of them (Major Cain, look him up, hard as nails) but didnt tell anyone about it as he 'didnt think it was important' so no one really knew in his family til he died. The other was won by a lad from near where my dad was born who crewed an anti tank gun single handedly knocking out several german tanks... his gun was knocked out and he was serioulsy wounded.. so he didnt call for a medic he crawled to another upright gun and crewed that on his own until he was killed after taking out half a dozen more tanks.

He's our Audie Murphy.

On the East Lt Cairns won a VC for the battalion after being attacked by the japanese on a hill the battalion were holding, a japanese officer severed his arm at the elbow with a sword (it was sort of still hanging on a bit), cairns punched the japanese guy out, stole his sword then repulsed the attack with it... once his company was safe he thought it was ok to die.

Again, they build em tough round the way of me and Hobojebus.

My regiment is 500 years old but recently disbanded. With tales of valour like the above you can understand why it was a sad day for us in Staffordshire when the 'black knots' were undone.

History lesson over but i thought i'd explain why it wasnt a racist battle cry and got carried away

Also as a tankie you're *everyones* number one target.

(thats my regiments 'oo-rah' btw... in the old days it was 'wooooah mohammed' but we're not allowed that one anymore )

Gee i wonder why...

Any one of the US airforce on this forum? Just askin' because I think Warthogs are cool. But I'll admit I'm the very last person you want in the cockpit of an A-10. Hell. Id fire that gun dry on the runway, wait for it to get realoaded and then take of.

Also gonna point out that i haven't been in service. The Belgian army canceled the draft a few years before i would have to join. They probaly went:" Yeah, we don't want that Robin Graves kid running around and messing up our tanks here!"

Im a bit funny about A10s.

Their pilots are a bit pooly trained.

In GW1 we lost more men to two A10s firing indiscriminantly at our lads than we did to Iraqi fire and we were the vanguard of the attack.

Another UK column flying UV 'allied' panels and miles away from any hostiles was engaged TWICE by one A10 flight even thought they were radioing them to try and tell them to stop shooting.

I think they found out afterwards the pilots were on aphetamines.

Funny think about the A10: in a single week, I met two guys who'd been crew chiefs for A10s. One from Vietnam, one from Desert Storm.

Long service craft!

I never knew the A10 was flying during the vietnam war. Must have been on 'trials' then as i thought they came into service in the mid 80s.

Close air support in nam was often the old skyraider as it was slow enough to be able to see and hit a grund target... well see em anyway, you're dropping 500lb tins of napalm, you're going to hit everything in the vilage

That and you dont have to worry about enemy fighters as they rarely showed up.

Funny think about the A10: in a single week, I met two guys who'd been crew chiefs for A10s. One from Vietnam, one from Desert Storm.

Long service craft!

Once at a show at my regimental museum we'd been representing the regiment at Arnhem

So i'm sitting in a trench i'd dug the day before (i can still dig a proper trench in a few hours with a mate or two even *with* a shredded back but it hurt the next day!) dressed in 1940s airborne kit and a cluster of guys were chatting around the trench and i joined in.

We were all Staffords from the regiment of different eras. One guy had been in the regiment in the 50s, another in the 1970s, a couple from the 80s... me their from the 90s and a guy who had been in right at the end in the early 2000s before amalgamation. Oddly we all knew the same people or the same familys and we were like family oursleves.

'Do you know Major Green?'

'No but is his son Doug Green, D company?'

'yeah thats him'

'yeah served with him, good bloke, is rory falls still about?'

etc

Half a century of soldiers from the same regiment (and mainly same battalion), never met each other before but like brothers within minutes.

THAT is the strength of the British regimental system. it tends to be built from families who stay in the regiment.

Like my great grandad was a Stafford who fought in the great war at Gallipoli (and later for a short time in flanders)