in the RAF was always devoted to sporting activities, and on this particular occasion I was kitted out for football, complete with shorts, long socks and studded boots. One of the squadron Landrovers had been carelessly left outside the barrack block with its key in the ignition. Without any thought of the consequences, I jumped in, fired it up and put it into first gear. So far so good, but the Landrover had bare metal clutch and brake pedals and I was wearing studded football boots. When I let out the clutch my boot slipped from the pedal, which then shot out with a bang, an inch or so more than it should have done. I was not aware of it, but my right foot was pressed fully down on the accelerator and off I shot, weaving down the road at full throttle in first gear and unable to depress the clutch. Careering at speed onto the grass on either side of the road, I zigzagged towards the officers' mess, trying to get the hang of the steering. It was 100 yards later that I realised what my right foot was doing and transferred it from the accelerator to the brake pedal. And just in time. I shuddered to a halt with the engine stalled, no more than three feet from the station commander's Opel Kapitan. It was plain to me I needed some basic instruction before my next attempt. It seems crazy now that so many of us were able to fly aeroplanes around at 600 miles an hour but were not legally able to drive a car.
My driving instruction consisted of a couple of short periods driving the Landrover around the station under the supervision of an older pilot. I soon got the hang of gear changing and a driving test was arranged with a corporal from the Motor Transport Section. This simply involved driving around the station's quiet roads with little or no other traffic. All went well until I was required to reverse into a garage with doors wide enough to allow access for a three-ton lorry. I wiped off the Landrover's semaphore indicator on my side while leaving five or six feet clearance on the other side. The corporal announced that, regretfully, I had failed. Could I come back tomorrow?
Of course I could, and I did, this time to be issued with an RAF driving licence. Two weeks later I was in a Volkswagen minibus leading a convoy of trucks on detachment from Bruggen near Munchen Gladbach to Sylt on the coast of Schleswig Holstein. With the aid of a police escort through the centre of Hamburg we arrived without mishap.
8