my behest, we waved our vehicles past us and, now at the back, caught up with each in turn, formated on it, and handed up sandwiches to the crew and filled their mugs. Whilst strictly outside official procedures the ploy worked a charm. Everyone was happy as we carried on driving. Then came a problem. A driver of a German lorry was trying to throw his weight about, ducking and diving amongst us. My drivers, who had experienced this sort of thing before when an anti-occupation zealot started messing about, knew what to do. Corporal Hudson prompted me to watch their reaction. My drivers bunched up round, and boxed in, the truck and kept it tied in until just before the next pull-in when they slowed down almost to a stop, forcing him off the road into the rest area. That done, everything returned to normal, with smiles of satisfaction and 'thumbs up' all round.
The Bremen - Hamburg Autobahn had two lanes in each direction with a grass area separating them. On the outer side of each carriageway was a rumble strip of two lines of stone setts before the grass verge. The concrete surface was laid in jointed sections. On a long trip such as this the constant b-dum, b-dum, b-dum, of our wheels over the joints could become very wearing. That, coupled with the notorious constant scream of the Thorneycroft gearboxes, could lead to fatigue. Another break was called for. We were already near Hamburg, close to a scheduled stopping place. This was also where we picked up our Police motorcycle escort. After stretching our legs we reboarded and moved off. Our escort, a member of the local Polizei, led us through the city, stopping traffic, and clearing our way through. He didn't bother about speed restrictions, and some of our drivers struggled to maintain the pace through twisting streets and over what should have been, but for our escort, very busy junctions. It was exciting stuff. We stopped at the fringe of the northern suburbs, bade our escort farewell after thanking him, and had another break.
The drive to Ütersen was uneventful. On arrival we took the vehicles to the MT Section, had them refuelled, and parked up for the night. Chiefy and the Corporals

Hamburg's Elbe Bridge in 1953. Not far from here we picked up our convoy escort. 76