| Subject: Driving Miss Daisy? |
Author:
Dave P.
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Date Posted: 16:37:14 04/20/05 Wed
As a break from the Bramcote Saga, Jim reminded me, again (you can all blame Jim for my incessant chatter), of my experience driving a Senior Officer. My original posting to the Army Air Corps in 1973 was as the Driver/Operator to the OC Sqdn but my most memorable experience was, oddly enough, many years after I had left the Army. I was a contract chauffeur for a company called Guy Salmon who offered a Chauffeur driven limousine hire service. This particular job was to collect a V.I.P from the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce and return him to the D.O.D. in Whitehall and the limmo was a big Austin Royale (the big black shiny cars that the queen uses, for the uninitiated).
I duly arrived at the B.C.O.C. at the appointed time ( well five mins before a parade, as I was always taught ) and to my shock, horror, this totally pissed, out of it completely, person was poured into the back of my limmo and I was given a large suitcase and a bag containing a ceremonial headdress and sword and told to get him to Whitehall by seven thirty, latest, as he was due to address some major International Military Symposium. My pleas for help fell on deaf ears, I'm afraid and I left Birmingham with the final words of encouragement "And for gods sake, see if you can sober him up between now and then!!" Whilst I'm driving? The M40 hadn't been finished at this time and I thought the M1 would prove too quick for the job in hand, so I took the old A40, mainly because I could pull over at intervals and attempt to get the General dressed. Thank jasus for BIG limmos! It must have been worth a kings ransom to see me trying to get this semi-conscious, rag doll dressed in full ceremonial uniform, in four stages, from Birmingham to London but I did it, just!
As I pulled up to the doors of this famous Whitehall building and opened the car door for the General, he woke up, cleared his throat, put his hat on his head, grabbed his sword and stepped from the car as though we had just driven round the corner from the Palace. Giving me a broad smile and slight nod of the head, he disappeared inside. As I never read anything in the papers about an international incident or some such, I assume the old boy got away with it. I did get a letter from Head Office of Guy Salmon a few weeks later, saying the General had written a nice letter to the company and 'Mentioned me in dispatches', so to speak and I got a bonus! So all's well that end well eh!
(all names, ranks and locations mentioned above have been altered for the sake of anonymity and the protection of VIPs)
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