Bovington

I've had this from BlueGeorge today (Jan 2012) which is hopefully a bit of a personal insight into the unit -

The unit (I use that description very loosely) was the 'RE Support Troop' based at Bovington, it was as you suggest a stand alone troop managed by a troop commander (Captain) and a troop Staff Sgt and approx 20 other ranks (3 x CPL 3x L/Cpl and a rabble of other ruffians.

They were under the day to day management of the regiment running the RAC centre at Bovington but came under the RE wing D&M School for admin purposes etc.

Their task was to manage all the AFV's used for teaching all Armoured Engineers Class 3 up to Class 1 as well as CET operators/crewmen.

We ran 4 separate sections, CET( with 6 CET's), Chieftain (2 x Training Wedges and 3 x AVLB's) and a Centurion section (2 x Cent' Mk5 Wedges, 1x Mk7 105 Gun Tank and 3 x Mk 5 165 AVRE's) as well as having a 2 man MT section who ran an LWB land rover and a Scammel Bridge transporter for the Chieftain AVLB N08 and No9 bridges.

A great bunch of lads who were the best at what they did in Armoured circles.

In 1982 RE support troop sent 2 Cet's and 4 crew attached to 59 Ind Cdo Sqn RE on Operation Corporate (Falkland Islands) where they performed admirably and were credited with shooting down an A4 Skyhawk using small arms fire!