[Hanno Spoelstra]

Originally posted by Bill Miller
The Photo from Henk Kuipers website is of C Squadron, 49APCR. The documentation I got recently shows that we really shafted the British Army when it came to the Rams we gave them. They received pretty much exclusively all really early Rams of the 39000 and 40000 series. Another Pathé newsreel that shows C Squadron rolling into Hamburg shows several early Rams with hull side doors.

Following my reply to Kipp I had only seen one picture of a Ram Kangaroo with hull side doors, Kipp Anderson sent me the following e-mail:

Hi Hanno, Many many thanks for that info. As I had never seen a Kangaroo with the side doors intact-I thought that it would have had the ventilators only. However it makes sense that if they had the earlier engine they would still have had the side doors especially if they were the last of the last. As they had proven their worth well before then, I guess that made any and all that were still left in England available.

So now that the can of worms was opened, I started to dig through my books to see if I could find another photo or two of a side door intact Kangaroo.

I had always thought something looked strange on the third Kangaroo in this first photo that is in George Forty's Road to Berlin. It has a side mounted ventilator like the second one in the row but it seems to be higher and there is a flat area where it is mounted-could this be a door?

Thankfully Forty included the IMW print number in his caption, so I went to the IWM website and punched it up-Bingo!!!!!

The original photo-
BU 2846
Ram Kangaroo personnel carriers carrying troops of the 9th Durham Light Infantry near Weske, 31 March 1945.


BU 2847
Ram Kangaroo personnel carriers carrying troops of the 9th Durham Light Infantry near Weske, 31 March 1945.


BU 2823
A Cromwell tank and Ram Kangaroo personnel carriers in Weseke, 29 March 1945.


BU 3648
Ram Kangaroo personnel carriers of 4th Armoured Brigade in Rethem, 16 April 1945.