www.TheSixAppealWheelGroup.org

The Falkland Islands Commando Story - The Epic Voyage Home

The story starts with a chance comment made on a web site that I had placed some pictures on some time ago. I received an e mail to say that someone had commented on a picture in my album. Looking through other comments I noticed a reference to the Falkland Islands Fire & Rescue service and the vehicles it had in service and some older ones no longer used. It mentioned that the Commando engine had 'blown up' on a 65 miles RTC dash across the Island. The vehicle was not going to be repaired due to it's age etc and would be sold off locally. Another thing I had noticed was that the Commando was a rare four door bodied vehicle - most Commandos are two door. The majority of those built in four door configuration were exported to governments such as Barbados and others.

A member of the group, John Carter, saw the message I posted on the site and composed a letter to the authorities in the Falklands and awaited a reply. This eventually came and it was suggested that a memo was sent to the various government officials to see how they felt about the appliance coming back to the UK for preservation and display. The reply was that many agreed with the proposal for the group to have the vehicle providing that no cost was incurred by the FI Government to ship it back.The rights to use the Falkland Islands Fire & Rescue Service logos to generate income from items to sell and support the running and maintaintance of the vehicle was also granted.

During the early negotiations conducted by John, his Father unfortunately died and he had to step down for a few weeks to deal with his loss. Another group member, Alisdair Couper, stepped in and continued to communicate with the chief fire officer Gardner Fiddes to continue to bring the vehicle back as soon as possible. Over the coming months and many phone calls and e mails later the date was set to transport the vehicle to the local docks for it's epic 8,540 mile trip to Southampton possibly via Canada. This happened on the 4th August 2009 when the appliance left the Fire station for the last time. I have just received these pictures on 6th August 2009.