Les Morris, a RAAF huey chopper pilot flying Bell UH-1B Iroquois Helicopter A2-1019, was ferrying a load of wounded Vietnamese to the civilian hospital in Vung Tau. To save time, he landed the chopper on the main road right outside the hospital.

An annoyed American military policeman handed Morris a parking ticket!

Richard Leslie Adams, RMP 1919-1925

Acting SGT Richard Adams proceeded immediately to Luxor to report to MR Howard Carter, c/o Lord Carnarvon's expedition, Winter Palace Hotel.

On arrival, Richard learn't that the expedition was at the end of its search of the Valley of the Kings. The British Army had loaned some survey equipment and his job was to check it against the inventory and arrange for its return to Cairo by boat. A seven day job - but he was to stay longer.

He was certainly present and intimately involved in, perhaps even, responsible for, the actual 11th hour discovery of the tomb and its treasures. The Expedition eventually closed down in 1932 and Richard had been with it for ten years.

In the RMP Journal of 1982 Richard told of his invention, with the help of a newspaper report of 'The curse of King Tut' for security purposes to deter tomb robbers. It is also possible for a reader of the transcript from 'Insight' 29th August 1971 to ponder whether the MP in causing the continuation of an aborted search, made the key contribution to the discovery! Without him, who knows? The expedition had already arranged to depart before he came on the scene and it was, it seems it was he who sniffed out the actual location of the tomb.

In 1997 a book was written about Richard's adventures and a reviewer wrote "Chief among the archaeologists who have been applauded over the years for discovering the tomb of Tutankhamen were Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon , but there was a third player in the drama whose vital part has never been fully acknowledged". That third player was Military Policeman, Sergeant Richard Leslie Adamson MFP.

At the end of the Second World War, the skills of the German Military Police were quickly appreciated by the British and American, who used several entire companies of fully armed Feldgendarmes (military police) and Feldjager (special military police) as auxiliaries to assist their own hard pressed police formations. In the chaotic conditions of the immediate post war period the experienced manpower provided by these troops was of great help to the occupying authorities.

Elements of the Feldjagger were the last German troops to lay down their arms after WW2. When troops in the South of Germany surrendered to the Americans, the US forces realised that with huge numbers of German troops surrendered or attempting to surrender, the Feldjagger could be of great use in maintaining order. General Kesselring, agreed to put his Feldjager at the disposal of the US Army; and for several weeks after the cease-fire the feldjager - fully armed and equipped - remained on duty.

Their tasks included overseeing German adherence to the cease-fire; maintaining order among German troops; maintaining order in occupied areas; controlling traffic; and collecting individual stragglers. The Feldjagger finally laid down their arms as late as 23 June 1946.

On rare occasions, allied troops found themselves being directed by German MP even though they had surrendered and the allies had one. This caused the odd problem or two and the odd allied soldier was punished for disobeying the German MP directions as they had come from the allied Command staff. Areas like "out of bounds" and "no parking" were common tasks allocated to the German MP and the holding areas for surrendered German troops.

In April 1945, WW2 in Europe was drawing to a close. Allied armies were vigorously pushing into Germany from both the east and west, and enemy resistance was crumbling. The American Army was making rapid gains in territory, often advancing thirty-five to fifty miles in a single day.

Since each of its combat divisions contained at least one military police platoon, the MPs were direct participants in this final victorious drive. One such platoon, that assigned to the 90th Infantry Division in the X11 Corps of General George S. Patton Jr's famous Third Army, accidentally made one of the most astounding and lucrative discoveries of the war.

On the evening of April 4 a two man roving jeep patrol from the 90th Military Police Platoon was driving through the recently captured village of Merkers near the town of Eisenach about seventy-five miles northeast of Frankfurt am Main when it encountered a lone German woman on the road. Because it was after curfew, the patrol stopped to question the woman.

She explained that she had come out to get a midwife for a neighbour who was about to give birth. Deciding to verify her story, the MPs took the woman in their jeep to the midwife's house and then transported both women to the scene of the impending nativity.

After the baby was born, the patrol was transporting the woman back to their respective residences when they passed the entrance of a local salt mine. One of the women casually remarked, "That's the mine where the gold is buried". Intrigued by this off hand remark, the two MPs questioned the woman about it. They learned that several weeks earlier great loads of material had been brought to the village from the east for storage in the mine. The patrol passed on this information at once to its superiors, who verified its accuracy by questioning local officials of the corporation that owned the mine.

General Manton S. Eddy, the X11 Corps commander, had the mine searched. Two thousand feet below ground in a complex of tunnels, the searchers found piles of German currency that had been hastily stashed there; thousands of gold coins from several nations, including the United States; and stocks of art treasures looted from throughout Europe, along with others shipped to the mine for safekeeping from the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum in Berlin.

The mine also housed suitcases filled with jewelry including silver and gold cigarette cases, wristwatch cases, spoons, forks and gold filling teeth. In addition, behind a steel door blocking one of the tunnels the searchers discovered an estimated $250 million in gold bars.

On April 12 General Patton, who had been notified immediately after the contents of the mine had been discovered, toured the mine in the company of General Dwight Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, and General Omar Bardley, commander of the 12th Army Group, of which the Third Army was an element.

"Except for the instincts of human decency on the part of two American MPs, we might not have discovered it until much of it had been more securely hidden away" said General George S. Patton Jr., in describing how millions of dollars worth of hidden treasure was discovered in WW2.