Ammunition boxes are usually painted green or brown in colour, however examples painted grey can also be found and in the British Army these are usually an indicator of some sort of special munitions and today we are looking at an example that was used to hold irritant cartridges used in the testing of NBC masks and equipment:

During basic training recruits go into the training room and a pellet of CS gas is set off to fill the room with fumes to give the soldiers reassurance that their respirator works, they then have to remove the respirator, shout out their rank, name and number and leave the room by which time most will have burning eyes and possibly being sick!

The front of this box indicates that this box contained 1 irritant kit, smoke, respirator testing L1A1:

The opposite side of the box indicates that this set of CS gas was produced in March 2014:

The top of the box has further markings together with a handle to carry the box:

The end of the box has the NSN number for the testing kit:

The box itself was manufactured in 1964, indicating that the box was used many times before it was marked up to hold CS testing gas:

I have tried to limit the number of ammunition boxes in the collection as they do take up a lot of room and can become a bit ‘samey’, this one however was unusual and interesting enough that I couldn’t resist adding it.