Engineers...

[Bixxer Bob]

The Royal variety. 

My neighbour is ex Army Royal Engineers.  We were chatting the other day and and he recounted a story about clearing jungle in Malaya to allow helicopters to land.  They were dropped in by heli through the jungle canopy - which gave them the incentive to get the job done as there was no other way out - and had to clear an area big enough for a Wessex.  Which sounds straight forward until you remember that a fully loaded Wessex needs a runway to get airborne. 

Anyway, the trees were huge, needing seven men with outstretched arms to circle one.  They didn't have a chainsaw big enough to get the job done and, worse, the first band of flanges was about 20ft up and strong enough to flick the base in the air when they hit the ground.  If you've ever felled, or seen felled, a split trunk you will know this is a dangerous, man-killing situation.  The job called for lateral thinking so they reached for their most trusted tool,  20lbs of plastic explosive. 

They drilled the trunk  and packed the explosive, stood a safe distance back and.... Kaboom!!!

Pity they didn't spot the trunk was rotten inside most of the way up.  What they produced was, in effect, a timber cannon.  A belching tower of rotting sawdust shot hundreds of feet in the air and enveloped everything as it decended.  "Hmm, we'll not do it that way again...."

[John Stenhouse]

Ask him if they had 2cv pickups? There's a story about the army/navy getting 2cv pick ups from the factory at slough and using them in the jungle, reason was the wessex, as you obviously know, wasn't over endowed with engine power and the weight of a land rover was a non starter so they went with the lightweight 2cv

[Bixxer Bob]

Will do!!

Forgot to add,  when the dust cleared the tree was still standing albeit with a few leaves and branches missing