A long, straight road
I once broke five RAF laws in five minutes. And got away with it. You won’t remember, but last July I told you how, one New Year’s Eve, I found myself at dead of night on a very long and very straight road, walking from Chowringhee in Calcutta (Kolkata) and hoping for someone to stop and tell me where I was supposed to be going. An American Air Force jeep-driver did exactly that and all was well.
During the next few weeks I took matters into my own hands and, for fun and in the absence of having any work to do (my visit was a temporary measure, being on my way back to a posting in England), taught myself to drive. This was a haphazard affair concerned chiefly with a friend getting hold of the keys for a dump-truck and me driving it round and round a spare patch of ground. At tedious parties I find this is good for either filling awkward silences or, if necessary, creating them. On the first day I ran over a snake and, not surprisingly, killed it outright. The fact that I had actually aimed at it and that the dump truck was of the rear-wheel steering variety moved the friend who was advising me to tell me I had natural ability.
This was rash of him, because by the time I had passed a sort of test I was getting cocky. Cockier, that is. They put me on the driving rota and one morning I found myself climbing into a 3-ton Bedford truck. I managed to pull out of the yard without doing anything silly and gradually discovered which lever and switch did what. Within the week I was driving troops and machinery hither and thither to destinations in and around Calcutta. My cockiness was at its peak when a routine call came for me to pick up one of the Bedfords and take airmen on a ‘liberty run’ into the city.
I filled up, and the men got on board. There seemed to be a lot of them, but who was I to argue? I took off and, with the ten miles of dead straight Grand Trunk Road ahead and a lot of singing behind, I joined in and went faster. The windows were down and the effects were cooling.
Then in my mirror I saw an RAF Police jeep gaining on me and gonging.
I stopped. One of the red-capped men wandered round to the back of the truck and the other came up to my window. The conversation, with its obligatory police opening for these occasions, is inscribed on my memory.
‘O.K. Where’s the fire, Airman?’
‘Fire?’
‘You were travelling at sixty miles per hour.’ He made a note in his book of Charge Sheets. ‘You’re on a charge. Now, show me your twelve-fifty, Airman.’
My 1250 Identity Card was in the top pocket of my shirt, and my shirt was hanging over the back of a chair, and the chair was by then three miles behind me. In response, I possibly spread my hands.
‘You realise it is an offence to fail to carry your twelve-fifty at all times, Airman?’ He made a note. ‘You’re on another charge. Where is your twelve-fifty, Airman?’
I told him about the chair, and he noted it.
‘And where is your Unit, Airman?’
This I now knew to perfection and, proudly, told him. ‘325 Maintenance Unit, Bally.’
He held out his hand. ‘Your Journey Form, Airman.’
A Journey Form is the slip of paper given to a driver at the beginning of a trip, naming the home unit, destination, purpose of journey, the time and date of issue and the tachometer reading. It is signed by the NCO in charge of the unit. I remembered having it given to me when I collected the keys for the truck, but from then on my memory of it was the customary blank. I felt in my shorts pockets and looked all round the cab. No Journey Form. The fact was recorded.
‘OK. You’re on another charge, Airman.’ Then he looked pointedly at my bare chest. ‘It is also an offence to be improperly dressed on duty, Airman.’
To be properly dressed meant Air Ministry Issue clothes. When in public it was always wise to wear Air Ministry Issue clothes, or at least clothes that resembled them closely. But Air Ministry clothing was sturdy but uncomfortable. Shorts put one in mind of canvas. Socks were knee-length, woollen, dyed khaki and felt like blankets. Shoes were sensible black leather. Hats were hard sun helmets with a vent at the top, a bit like a recumbent breast with an inflated nipple. (In Burma we were given a refinement of this: a bush hat. Studying snapshots of the time I cannot decide which looked the more ridiculous.) After about six weeks in India your elders and betters advised you in matters of clothing and directed you to the dhurzi in the bazaar, who would run you up natty little numbers in cool cotton. On this morning I wore no hat, no shirt and no socks. Just a pair of shorts made by Ahmed’s Splendid Bespoke Tailors of Calcutta. I could understand the sergeant’s concern.
‘You’re on another charge, Airman.’
As he noted all this he was joined by his colleague who muttered a few words in his ear. There came a light in his eye. He must have felt he was approaching some kind of record.
‘Airman, my Corporal tells me you’re carrying fifty men in this vehicle. That is twenty men over the Air Ministry Regulations maximum quoted for this particular vehicle.’ (Don’t quote me on these statistics. The exact numbers escape me but these give you the general picture.) ‘So, another charge, Airman.’ He made a note on the Charge Sheet, which by now had reached Page Two, and took a final look round the cab. The two then moved away to talk privately.
He came back, put one foot up on the step and leaned in at the open window with the air of one who has a difficult subject to discuss and wishes for there to be no misunderstandings or hard feelings.
‘Now,’ he said, and actually smiling, ‘the thing is this. When I stopped you I was running my Corporal into the city. And,’ he looked at his watch, ‘I’ve got to get back to the Unit now, so -’
He paused, and scratched his chin in the manner of one who is waiting for some recognition of his likely intentions. In its absence he made up his mind, and winked.
‘Give him a lift, would you?’
My stare of pained disbelief must have impressed him. He looked at his corporal, his book of charge sheets and back at me. He shrugged, opened the book, tore out the two pages of charges he had just filled in and, with the carbon copies, tore them up, rolled them into a ball and threw them into the trees.
‘Now will you take him?’ he said.
I took him, and all fifty-two of us sang all the way to Chowringhee.