Close Reconnaissance Troops of Armoured regiments in the 70's learned to be pretty self-sufficient, mainly because they spent so much time detached from their regiments and one of the things that you had to do was your own recovery. If a vehicle got stuck it was invariably out with the shovel. We also had a winch device which was attached to between a static object and your bogged ferret and used to manually winch out the vehicle. It normally worked quite well. However on one occasion one of our ferrets got bogged and of course we all came to have a look, take the mickey out of the driver etc. The winch was rigged with its cable and attached to a nearby tree. Two willing volunteers [the bogged ferrets crew] then started operating the lever to winch it out and after a few minutes cranking they announced it was moving. The spectators contradicted them in a 'gentle military fashion' and informed them that it wasn't :-) The volunteers assured them that the cable was getting shorter. A good tempered arguement ensued which suddenly came to a halt when a loud creaking sound was heard. The entire party turned round just in time to see a 60' pine tree toppling over towards them and a number of short distance sprinting records were broken as everyone frantically moved out of the way. The tree fell over and dealt a killing blow to the Ferret which resulted in a distorted turret and suspension damage. What had happened was, as they were winching, it pulled the tree towards the Ferret - instead of the other way round. They later had to drive the Ferret to the nearest railway station to get it recovered and it literally crabbed its way down the road - very amusing.

One year during the Autumn exercises we were up against the germans and engaged in our usual process of finding a way through the enemy front line and then swanning around reporting where there units were located. We suddenly came across a headquarters and, as usual just sped up to shoot through it before they had chance to react. Normally this works but this time an idiot thought it would be a good idea to pull his DKW jeep out in front of me so that we would have to stop - I think he thought we were in some sort of softskin. Anyway we plowed into him and his crappy old relic just folded up around the front of the Ferret. When we stopped we climbed out and inspected the DKW, the side was all caved in and forced up with the end result that poor old conscript, who was still sat in his seat, was receiving a petrol shower from the fuel tank now suspended up over his head. We seperated the two vehicles and the DKW was a right-off , but the ferret only had a broken sidelight and a few dents and scratches in the paint work. This really impressed the germans and proved how tough they are.