ARU is for Armoured Reconnaissance Unit

Just a quickie I shot at Sandown just over a year ago, now well-over-time to get it out of Picasa, and despite a tatty box - a really rather wonderful thing! Thanks to Adrian Little at Mercator Trading - as always - for these shots.

Huh? What do you think of this? It's not all of them, but therein lies a small story, as Adrian found it it had an extra jeep, but no carrier, and they were all jumbled up, so he wasn't sure it was complete, so when I took it up to the stands outside the hall, to photograph it I worked out that each vehicle's wheels fitted in slots in the lining-card. Turned-out this box didn't have the carrier (single 'rocking' axle) but did have slots for the truck.

I suppose there was a version with the carrier and/or the other missing vehicles - amphibious Jeep/DUKW (it's none too accurate for either) and twin-Bofors 'gun-truck'? But that was months later and a didn't photograph the whole one - Doh!

Box sides, the turret of the armoured-car was missing and I was going to provide a replacement, but in the end to colour-match, I just gave Adrian a whole one as swap for the Allied-star adorned jeep which was buckshee to the set.

Seen here on the right; most of the vehicles can be found with or without the thermo-printed star (exceptions so far being the staff car, gun & limber, and strangely the Churchill?) while all the vehicles which take figures (Jeep, carrier and amphi-thing) can be found with one, two or three figures glued in. The Gun truck also gets a gunner sometimes.

We looked at them separately here, eleven years ago!

and ARU is actually for

1)    Annual Report [on a] Unit
2)    Army Rugby[-football] Union