John suggested I may wish to record this story for posterity and I decided to send it along to you all in case any of you have recollections of it to fill out details.

"Stolen" moped story.

It is with some trepidation that I record this story of my "criminal" past.
The only saving grace is that I have gone straight ever since this incident.

Sometime around 1960 we were on a big scheme and finished up somewhere near to Gutersloh with the whole regiment "cammed up" and in the forest.

Of course as always after some weeks of setting up, dragging out the wet camouflage nets and doing a countdown and moving repetitively for weeks, we were totally exhausted and seriously lacking in sleep. Some fool decided to allow us some time off to recuperate and naturally I and two others (cannot remember who but am pretty sure Eric Vasey was one) decided to go out drinking. Off we set in our best outfits, which probably by this time stunk to high heaven and headed towards where we thought civilisation was. Somehow we located a kind of theme bar of sorts called the Blaue Grotte, (the Blue Grotto). It was all papier-mache, blue imitation caves with tables and music and some intrepid local younger people attempting to dance on the miniscule dancing area in the centre. Anyway we sat down and ordered three beers. Shortly afterward three more beers just showed up and it transpired that one table of locals had bought them for us, so we did the "prosit" thing raising our glasses to them and downing the beer. Of course being gentlemen (despite the smell) we reciprocated. Shortly afterwards three more beer arrived from another table. To shorten an otherwise very long story we ended up in a drinking contest with the whole room. They however were doing it "in parallel" whereas we were in series, (technical jargon from a techy). Of course we were bound to loose this drinking competition and my recollections got fuzzy really quickly. Probably the acute lack of sleep and decent food did not help either.

My next relatively clear recollection is staggering down this back country road alone trying not to walk in front of the very few vehicles that came along. At some point self preservation even started me hanging on to trees so as not to walk into the road, when cars came along. Anyway it seemed like a very long way and I began to wonder if I could make it back to camp. I was passing a couple of set back houses, when I noticed a 50 cc moped leaned against a wall and the solution seemed obvious. I could not walk any more, ergo I had to ride. The moped ran for about ten seconds, before I fell into a ditch. After two attempts I gave up and left the moped about 50 yards from where I had picked it up. Sadly even at this point I cannot remember feeling any shame whatsoever, aside from the shame of not being able to ride the thing.

I got about a kilometre further, then an Austin champ stopped right next to me with a driver and a Brigadier in it. His immediate response was, "come here corporal, did you just take a moped back there?". I still clearly remember with great embassasment, gibbering back at him insanely like a five year old, "what sir, who sir, me sir? what sir, who sir, me sir?" several times. Eventually he said simply "yes you" at which point I owned up and was transported back to camp in his jeep.

Of course I ended up on a charge and eventually had enough money taken from my pay to buy two new mopeds. This as you can imagine was torture to a Yorkshireman, but I sure deserved it and have always since wished I could meet the German guy who owned the bike and apologise. Mind you my bet is that he ended up being really happy, as for certain I bought him at least a brand new moped (or two).