84RFK
Active member
In order to understand this story one should keep in mind that the Norwegian Home Guard wasn't too highly regarded by the regular army personel, and they were mostly equipped with wood heated stoves in their tents.
Anyway, this was during a (NATO?) winter exercise (Battle Griffin) some few years ago, temperatures had been climbing up and down between -28 and +2 centigrades the first weeks and very little maintainance had been done to the stoves.
At this exercise my unit was assigned to defend an intelligence batallion and run the different check-points, at the main gate where I was stationed we had managed to organize a big tent with a wood heated stove and were quite happy about it.
The list of personell with clearance and regular access to the compound were updated several times a day, ususally by some "black berets" who had obviously traded in their tanks for winter clothing and was assigned with paper-pushing in the intelligence battallion.
One of this guys in particular had some real problems to hide his contempt towards our Home Guard boys, and showed a rather nasty attitude.
Since I was wearing my shemag and some other non-regulation items he somehow concluded that I wasn't "regular Home Guard" and tended to address me whenever he showed up with the new lists.
It was on one of those occations we were standing at the desk, going through the updates, as I noticed one of our guys loading more firewood into the stove, which had burned out some half an hour ago.
In the corner of my eye I also noticed that he poured a good cup of kerosene into the stove, closed the lid and produced his Zippo in order to light the stove through the lower vent..
Off course the alarm bells went ringing in my head, semi-warm stove and kerosene usually makes up for a nice combustible mix, but I kept my focus on the papers in front of me and just waited in silence.
Sure enough, there was a "BOOOM" inside the tent, the lid of the stove nearly went through the roof, and a shower of ashes and black dust rained down on us.
I wiped the ash of the papers, turned towards the guy with the black beret who just stood there with baseball sized eyes and a hanging jaw, and said "You're not familiar with that, eh?"
He turned and looked at me in shock and uttered: "W-w-what?"
I lit a cigarette to hide the smile, and replied: "Standard Home Guard procedure to clean the stovepipe in field without dismantling the stove, just look it up in the UD2-1."
He was still trembling as he stumbeled off to tell his commrades in the cavalry how the Home Guard performed stovepipe cleaning.
Anyway, this was during a (NATO?) winter exercise (Battle Griffin) some few years ago, temperatures had been climbing up and down between -28 and +2 centigrades the first weeks and very little maintainance had been done to the stoves.
At this exercise my unit was assigned to defend an intelligence batallion and run the different check-points, at the main gate where I was stationed we had managed to organize a big tent with a wood heated stove and were quite happy about it.
The list of personell with clearance and regular access to the compound were updated several times a day, ususally by some "black berets" who had obviously traded in their tanks for winter clothing and was assigned with paper-pushing in the intelligence battallion.
One of this guys in particular had some real problems to hide his contempt towards our Home Guard boys, and showed a rather nasty attitude.
Since I was wearing my shemag and some other non-regulation items he somehow concluded that I wasn't "regular Home Guard" and tended to address me whenever he showed up with the new lists.
It was on one of those occations we were standing at the desk, going through the updates, as I noticed one of our guys loading more firewood into the stove, which had burned out some half an hour ago.
In the corner of my eye I also noticed that he poured a good cup of kerosene into the stove, closed the lid and produced his Zippo in order to light the stove through the lower vent..
Off course the alarm bells went ringing in my head, semi-warm stove and kerosene usually makes up for a nice combustible mix, but I kept my focus on the papers in front of me and just waited in silence.
Sure enough, there was a "BOOOM" inside the tent, the lid of the stove nearly went through the roof, and a shower of ashes and black dust rained down on us.
I wiped the ash of the papers, turned towards the guy with the black beret who just stood there with baseball sized eyes and a hanging jaw, and said "You're not familiar with that, eh?"
He turned and looked at me in shock and uttered: "W-w-what?"
I lit a cigarette to hide the smile, and replied: "Standard Home Guard procedure to clean the stovepipe in field without dismantling the stove, just look it up in the UD2-1."
He was still trembling as he stumbeled off to tell his commrades in the cavalry how the Home Guard performed stovepipe cleaning.
