[Western SMT]

The following is an extract from my father's world war 2 experiences, he was a driver/clerk for REME mobile workshops.

Convoy driving in the dark was not as easy as it sounded.
Each truck had a white circle painted on the rear axle differential and the truck behind only used a pencil beam light so in theory if you were correctly positioned the light would show the white circle of the truck in front. Theories are all very well but in practice it was very easy to lose sight of the trucks.
I had the unenviable job of driving the 13th truck and having the Artificer Sergeant Major with me riding shotgun. All was going well this night or so I thought until we stopped at one of the many crossroads in Belgium, the first nine trucks had disappeared so I was now the 4th truck in the convoy. At this point a noise was heard and it sounded like a tank coming towards us and as we had no tanks in the area it was time to dive for cover. The scource of this noise stopped beside our trucks and discovered it was one of our own lost trucks driven by two Aberdeen comedians now towing a trailer they had found, and one of the trailer wheels was down to the metal rim making this tank coming noise. They were ordered to ditch the trailer and we continued, after many miles and losing more trucks I was now lead truck and seeing that the road ahead wasn't right I stood on the brakes throwing everybody in the back forward. After the shouting and swearing stopped we found out why the road wasn't right - there was no bridge ahead only a drop into the canal.
A local going down the canal path put us on the right road and all the trucks eventually met up at the designated area, so driving truck 13 was not as bad as it could have been.