The record
When the Army went onto the streets of Northern Ireland in 1969 its ambulances went with it, and the same riots that brought the Vehicle Protection Kit to the patrol Land Rovers brought a version of it to the Marshall-bodied 109 ambulance. The ambulance kit was glass-fibre-reinforced-plastic panels on the roof, the sides, the rear doors and the floor space between the stretcher racks, with polycarbonate windows, painted over, in the side panels, and door panels, a belly plate, bonnet and wing pieces. The vehicle was meant to withstand low-velocity bullets, nail bombs and canisters packed with gelignite and scrap metal — rough and crude, but effective — and with the armour on it weighed two and a half tons, which is why a heavy-duty Salisbury rear axle and stronger rear springs went under it.
The registry's model is the Marshall body on the Series III 109 in the kit's form as 30 FJ 20 survives: plain olive with the red-cross panels and the roof cross, the shared military bumperettes painted olive, pillar mirrors, the later deluxe bonnet, and the rounded GRP skirts curving in under the cab and body between the wheels. The painted-over polycarbonate side windows and the belly plate are recorded but not modelled.
