Bradford Lad: Trouble Brewing On Patrol
When you are serving with the British Army in Germany you don't expect the enmy to be trees! Mike Coatesworth explains all.
When I was in the Army I was stationed for a time in Germany. I was a member of a "crack'' spearhead unit. If there was any trouble we would be the first sent to deal with the situation.
One day the alert was sounded. We rushed around, assembling our kit, ensuring we had the essentials to last us three days. Cigarettes, Mars Bars, tea bags, toilet rolls - these were the items that came before weapons and ammunition. We stowed our supplies and ourselves into armoured personnel carriers, and soon we were on our way.
I was in command of one of the vehicles. My job was to ensure that the driver was going in the right direction, and to ensure that he didn't fall asleep - not a difficult task when we were part of a column containing several other vehicles.
We were heading towards Germany's eastern border. I was relaxed, standing in the turret, wearing protective goggles. Suddenly there was a lot of smoke, which I thought was unusual on such a fine day. Horns started to beep from the vehicles near us. I thought for a moment they were trying to overtake. Then I became aware that our vehicle was on fire.
Apparently, we had hit low-hanging tree branches. Some of these had broken off and come to rest on our vehicle's engine cover. We halted, put out the fire, checked that no serious damage had been done, then speeded up to rejoin the column.
There was a tap on one of my my legs. One of my lads handed me a cuppa. I was so looking forwards to that cup of tea. I didn't see the tree. There was no time to duck. A branch whipped the cup from my hand, and I had only taken one sip!
I gave our driver a little thump on the head with my microphone. I could have sworn he had steered deliberately for the low-hanging branch because I had been given a cup of tea before he got his.
When we reached our rendezvous point I noticed an isolated farmhouse. I walked over to it and asked if I could use the toilet. Soon there was a queue of 50 Tommies at the farmhouse door, all with he same idea. I pitied the poor farmer's wife, having to clean up after the British Army had invited themselves to use her home as a convenience.
No sooner were we back with our vehicles than the word came through that it was a false alarm. We had to immediately return to base. There wasn't even time to brew up.
However, on the return journey we managed to throw a few twigs onto our engine cover, and naturally we had to stop to put out the fire. And that gave us just enough time for a nice cup of tea.
