Following on from the last post Bob Anderson has kindly supplied some more photos and information about the trip he did for Promotor to Baghdad in October 81.
Bob was taken on, for this job only, to drive a Coles crane and thats what he did even though some of the photos show him driving one of Promotor’s lorries. It seems Ramsey Patterson was driving his lorry and Bob and Paul drove the cranes but as the journey progressed they would swap vehicles just to add a bit of spice to the trip. The cranes had a top speed of less than 40 mph so they would agree on somewhere to meet later in the day. It took 15 days to get to Baghdad and once there Bob stayed on for a couple of weeks helping out. One reason he stayed was because of the Iraq/Iran war there were very few flights out. Finally he got a lift from another driver returning home who dropped him off only one mile from his house. What a result.
I have posted in the past of a job I and a few other drivers did of ferrying Coles cranes to Baghdad. We had run back from Baghdad to Iskenderen and Mersin where we collected the cranes but at least we had hotels, well turkish doss houses, every night unlike Bob and Paul.
Many thanks for the info and photos Bob.
