Posted by
Curtal Friar on Wednesday, September 24, 2008 12:09:31 PM
Here's another story that willibeaux shared with me, from his time in the military. This is an excerpt from a letter he wrote back in the fifties to his wife.
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Well here is something funny I want to tell you about. We rode over to midnight chow on a "tug". A tug is a little tractor like vehicle that is used to tow aircraft around. On the way over to the mess hall this kid named Ham from my section drove it over. One guy was sitting on the hood, another on the right rear fender and I was sitting on the left rear fender. We parked it in front of the mess hall and went to chow. When we came back we all took the same positions and Ham still took the drivers seat.
Well the kid that was sitting on the hood decided that he was going to drive. In plain words he had his back to the front of the tug and he would have to work the pedals backwards from the normal way you drive. You know how you move your right foot from the gas to the left to the brake pedal. Well he had to move his right foot to the right to the break pedal as he was sitting backwards. Ham was operating the clutch and shifting gears.
We got to going pretty good across the apron and when we got to our side, this kid started to maneuver the tug around and in and out of the aircraft sitting there. Well he swerved to miss an oxygen bottle cart and was heading straight for a ditch. Instead of remembering that (this part is really funny) he had to work everything opposite from normal driving, he pushed the panic switch. Instead of moving his right foot to the right to engage the brake pedal, he thought he had his foot on the brake pedal and kept pressing harder.
That old tug really took off and we hit that there a flying. Yes we did. Wal that there old tug stopped dead and we all flew through the air. I landed in the middle of the road in a running stance and really had to keep moving to retain my balance. The driver did a tumble-somersault over the hood and I don’t know what all. Poor old Ham ended up in that there ditch on top of the other passenger.
Luckily none of us were hurt, but it was so funny the way it happened that we all busted out laughing. Honey if you had seen it you would have gone into stitches. That old tug really gouged a hole in the bank of the ditch. We pushed all of the dirt back into the hole and covered it up.