大象传媒

This story has been submitted by Eleanor Fell, 大象传媒, on behalf of Audrey Hull, who has given her permission for her story to be on the site, and understands the terms and conditions of the site.

My first introduction to the square, snub-nosed Bedford 3-tonner was at Camberley, Surrey, A.T.S. Motor Transport Centre. As an 18 year old Womans Transport Service Recruit I learned the mysteries of the internal combustion engine (suck, squash, bang, push!) and drove it along the Hog's Back and around the Devil's Punch Bowl - although I passed my driving test in an Austin W.D. ambulance.

I was then posted to the 8th (London) M.T.Coy, Woolwich, where I drove trucks, ambulances and staff cars, including the R.A. Depot Colonel's Humber Pullman.

I returned to Camberley for an N.C.O's course and while I was there the young Princess Elizabeth came over from Windsor Castle to learn to change the wheels of cars and trucks (white nuts first, then red). Her father George VI, surreptitiously removed the rotor arm of her truck and she had to find the fault.

Once again I returned to Woolwich, where I did a course in the RASC workshops. My first job was to remove the full sump of a Bedford truck, as the drain plug was stripped. I stood for hours on a box grinding in valves, and stitching away at torn canvas 'tilts'.

As a sergeant M.T. instructor I was teaching a group of ATS drivers the transmission system of a vehicle and asked them if they knew what was a torque tube. One glamourous blonde, her mind on driving officers, said it was the communication pipe between the driver and passenger of a staff car!

We took Sir Winston Churchill's luggage for the Yalta Conference, including some very odd-shaped cases and parcels, from Downing Street to Addison Road railway station, spending most of the night in the Combined Operations Club, Whitehall after dealing with a puncture.

After VE Day we returned the Dutch gold ingots from the Bank of England, via Park Lane to Tilbury, in a convoy of three tonners (each one weighed down with only a few boxes), escorted by the Royal Marines.

So you can see why the Bedford Three-Tonner has such nostalgia memories for me.

I also had a Royal Enfield motor cycle, for inspecting our detatchment in Kingston-upon-Thames. But it got caught in the tram-lines in Forest Gate and I fell off. But it was great fun to have the run of the requisitioned Richmond Park.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.