ARmy Rumour SErvice

Originally Posted by Tiffy_Massive

As much as it pains me to say it, i never understood the system or methodology of charging yellow handbags for doing our job

At the units I was attached to, yellow handbags were never charged by the eces or VMs for doing our job. Rece-mechs were the exception but that was at a time they came under LAD Main and not the Fitter Section.
Yellow handbags were used as the normal rate of currency for out-of-hours work, fixing cars, fitting car stereos etc though.
Occasionally a suitable quantity were delivered to the Section as a "thank you" or "token of appreciation" for our work in the preceding weeks, normally followed by the words "I´ve f**ked up and would appreciate any assistance". Subsequent inspection of the vehicle then "revealed" the fault condition to be a "normal" failure and rectified without there being a need to raise an NM&D.

Originally Posted by Domart

IIRC yellow hand bags were required payment for bogging only!

Agreed but I do not think they should have been, as it was the recy-mechs job to un-bog. That is what he was trained to do and generally enjoyed it more than being a tow-truck driver and hooking up a broken down LR or Bedford to the back of the wheeled recovery truck.
You could see it as driver or commander has screwed up by getting bogged but mistakes do happen and vis is limited when battened down. In my experience the crew of the bogged-in vehicle worked just as hard or not harder than the 24C crew to get the vehicle out as they wanted to get back in to the "fight".

I only experienced three occasions where I thought a "crating" by the recy-mechs was justified.

First was in Saudi in the lead-up to GW1. We were on one side of a Sabka and observed a M110 Bty on the other side decamming. They then set off in line astern straight across the Sabka. The two leading CVRTs made it to the far side, the rest of the vehicles didn´t. We felt sorry for their recy-mech but still chortled immensely.

Second was on BH-TA, we had just un-bogged a tank and had moved back against a tree-line to sort out the first brew of the morning. Just as we parked up we got called again by the same C/S being bogged in again less than 150m from where we had left them. We could have had them out again in 15 minutes but the German Commandant got involved and it turned into a 24-hour job but that is another story.

Third was also on BH-TA. A CH-Bridgelayer bringing the whole exercise to a halt by somehow finding itself on the top of Hitler´s Bunker. We were on a rather foggy night move at the time "Stop! Stop! Stop!" came over the net so well enjoyed the enforced rest.