When the retired Defence Force members of Gem Village in Irene near Pretoria were given a 5.5” (140mm) G2 field gun, dating from the 1930s, as a memorial to the many South African gunners who gave their lives in the Second World War, they had it restored and built a “platform of honour” to display the huge cannon.
But how to move this 6.2-tonne chunk of solid steel from the workshop to the plinth?
Gun tractors capable of moving field pieces of this calibre (pun intended) are very specialised beasts, with extra-heavy-duty chassis and multi-range transmissions; you don't just hook up a 4x4 double-cab and go for it.
So much so, in fact, that not even the military use them any more; today's large-calibre field guns are usually mounted on obsolete tank chassis so that they can move themselves and are known as SPG's (self-propelled guns).
According to retired Captain Dries Rabie (74), the closest thing to a gun tractor still in production on this side of the Iron Curtain is a Unimog - and that's where Ferdi de Beer, technical specialist at Mercedes-Benz South Africa and 'Mog driver extaordinaire, came in.
One phone call later De Beer - who's never shy when it comes to showing off what a Unimog can do - itched up with a U4000, which has a low-revving diesel engine rated at 160kW and an almost unstoppable 810Nm. It has a low-range transfer case, differential locks at both ends and is rated to tow up to 10 tonnes on hard ground.
The move got off to a shaky start, however, when De Beer and Rabie realised that the Unimog's tow pin was mounted way higher than the gun's coupling could reach - and there was no way they were going to lift the trail of the huge cannon by hand.
They had to find a couple of heavy-duty bottle jacks (one of which is visible in the picture) to raise the trail, and then de Beer had to reverse the 'Mog - sight unseen - with incredible precision, to within millimetres of the exact spot, so that the pin could simply drop into place.
The roads in Gem Village are designed for family cars, not gun tractors, so De Beer left the Unimog in low range and crawled at a snail's pace through the narrow spaces and tight corners to the display area.
There he had to drive right over the metre-high plinth in order to yank the huge gun up on to it - all in a very confined space and without ruining the neatly kept surrounding garden!
By this time, not surprisingly, almost the entire population of Gem Village had come out to watch, and De Beer got a well-deserved round of applause when the old “Fifty-five” came to rest in exactly the right spot.