What going on in this picture?

[kevin powles]

Hi, Looks like a make shift workstation to get underneath, cam plate access?? Any ideas?.

Battle of El Alamein 1942

kevin.

[Yeo.NT]

looks like a combat recovery to me. Arte et Marte

[horsa]

Looks like no track so probably a recovery for repairs somewhere out of range of enemy fire.

[Lynn Eades]

As mentioned above, track is missing. Carrier has been dragged onto a recovery trailer, which must be about to tilt forward. May be it is easier to tie it down, while the deck is still tilted back?

[rob love]

They may be watching the roadwheels on that plank. They would have laid the plank there so the road wheels don't get caught up on the girder type ramps.

[kevin powles]

AAh yes recovery but under fire, did not spot the trailer and the truck looked to small to take a carrier, intersesting picture.

kev.

[rob love]

Possible they laid smoke to conceal their work from enemy fire. While the enemy would know you are there in general, they cannot direct effective small arms fire through veil of smoke.

[Lynn Eades]

My guess is its incoming, judging by the guy on the ground.

[Ian Patrick]

Further information and a better quality version of that picture is on the AWM website here;

http://cas.awm.gov.au/item/013351

Ian

[rob love]

"Description
1942-10-05. RECOVERY UNITS OPERATING WITH THE A.I.F. IN THE WESTERN DESERT ARE DOING GOOD WORK IN THE SALVAGE AND REPAIR OF VEHICLES DAMAGED BY MINES AND ENEMY ACTION. THESE MEN OPERATE IN THE FORWARD AREAS AND CARRY OUT THEIR VALUABLE WORK OFTEN UNDER DIRECT FIRE FROM ENEMY BATTERIES. THIS PICTURE WAS TAKEN WHILE A SALVAGE CREW WAS AT WORK ON A BREN CARRIER. THE OPERATION WAS DISTURBED BY AN ENEMY SHELL EXPLODING UNCOMFORTABLY CLOSE. (NEGATIVE BY HURLEY)."

Call me a cynic but there is a thing or two in this photo that don't add up. There is shrapnel still leaving the point of impact so the detonation is very fresh. Yet the guy on the ground somehow got there in fractions of a second.


On the other hand, it may be a fire mission of more than one round, so perhaps the guy on the ground is the only one with any common sense, and this round was not the first in their vicinity. Quite the luck getting a shot of an explosion while it happens.


I had a rocket or two land in my general vicinity within the last couple years, and like the old vets say, the ones coming at you are the ones you don't hear. The projectile flies faster than the speed of sound, so the first thing you hear is the explosion. If you are hearing the whistle, that one is going somewhere else, and may well have already passed by.

[Lynn Eades]

Maybe the guy on the ground saw something (he was facing that way?) that the others, in that split second, hadn't had time to react to.
Otherwise it makes no sense, that the others are so exposed, while he's making like a cow pat.

[Little Jo]

Hi Guys

The guy on the ground may have known there was going to be an explosion as they could be clearing mines in front of the truck before they moved on.

Cheers

Tony some

[eddy8men]

just a picture of the reme doing what they do best, getting on with the job in hand.

[darron swift]

Hi Guys this photo is for sale on ebay belived to be the origanial and yes it has no track and they are under fire.

[RichardT10829]

Initially I thought the guy was on the deck looking under the carrier perhaps seeing if something was caught up or something along those lines. The guy stood up interests me (the one with his hand on the side armour) If he is REME you can hear the conversation "Bloody carrier drivers....he's made a right mess of this"

[Tony Smith]

Two points.

If it is an AIF unit, then the blokes will be AEME, not REME.

Secondly, Frank Hurley was famous/notorious for composing and/or recreating his pictures as recreations or even compositions, rather than actual "during the battle" scenes. This photo could well be a re-enactment. He felt it was far more important to convey the many elements of what he was depicting, rather than simply record an actual battle. He was essentially an artist using photography as a medium, rather than a chronicler recording actual events. That philosophy brought him into conflict with many in the Military, historians and journalists, but most of his pictures are so well composed technically, that many have become iconic images of war. Some of the AIF troops felt disdain for him as he treated them like actors when recreating scenes rather than follow them into battle. His personal courage cannot be doubted though, as his photgraphic career included many life-threatening highlights including being stranded on pack-ice with Shackelton's 1914 Antarctic expedition. A brief highlight of his career is HERE

Have a read of how it was normally done: HERE

[Richard Farrant]

No one has made much mention of the trailer so far. The Gantry lorry was probably a Leyland Retreiver or similar, and would not take a Carrier within the body. The trailer is not the normal Cranes 7 1/2 ton recovery, normally used, as wheels are out board of the trailer, the Cranes had the two rear axles with wheels under the load bed, and it also looks like a tilt bed trailer. So, is this an Australian Carrier transporter? I was looking at a Carrier transporter trailer recently in NSW, but that only had one axle, so rules that out.

[hrpearce]

http://www.mapleleafup.net/forums/sh...hlight=trailer Richard post #9 looks like a front view of this type of trailer.

[Richard Farrant]

Originally Posted by hrpearce

http://www.mapleleafup.net/forums/sh...hlight=trailer Richard post #9 looks like a front view of this type of trailer.

Thanks Robert, I thought there were Australian four wheeled Carrier trailers, as I can recollect Kurt Johansen used them when he built the self tracking trailers for his early road trains.

[Bob Moseley (RIP)]

Hi Richard - the trailers Kurt used were the two wheeled Bren Gun Carrier recovery trailer of which he bought twenty three out of Army Disposals. These formed the basis of the self-tracking trailers that he built.

Bob

[Bob McNeill]

The trailer in pic seems to be the same as AJ recovered last year. AJ posted pics at the time.

[hrpearce]

http://www.mapleleafup.net/forums/sh...hlight=trailer AJ's pictures.