HARRY WUFFENDEN.
It was the first week in January 1982 when Dave Longden and I had to load two box trailers at Rothman’s cigarettes in Spennymoor. The customs had been done on site, the trailer had been sealed and the carnet had been started. We both had about nine tons of cigarettes for Piraeus Docks just outside Athens. Running to Greece in the summer was I.M.H.O. one of the best jobs going but in the winter it was a completely different story.
When everything had been completed we dashed down to Hull Docks to catch the Norland, the North Sea Ferries overnight sailing to Europort. We reversed onto the boat as usual, little did we know that in six months time Britain would be at war with Argentina and this little boat would be in the South Atlantic being used as accommodation for prisoners of war near the Falkland Islands.
After a couple of great meals and a good nights sleep we docked in Europort the next morning at about 8 a.m. We made our way around the outskirts of Rotterdam and headed through Holland towards the West German border just past Venlo. After having lunch near the border we carried on until we reached Wieskirchen Services which was just past Frankfurt Airport.
There were usually one or two Brits parked here over night as it was near enough an eight hours drive from Zeebrugge. That night Dave and I were the only two British trucks parked there, we both had a shower and a decent meal knowing that it could be another four days before we got the chance to have one again.
The next morning we awoke to find that it had snowed overnight, by 8 a.m. after a cab wash and some breakfast we set off down the autobahn which had already been salted and gritted. By 10 a.m. the roads were clear but wet as we made our way towards Nuremberg and through Bavaria towards the West German border village of Waidhaus.
It was by now about 5 p.m. and it was already dark, from the West German side of the border you could see across the small valley to the Czechoslovakian side which was dimly lit about a kilometre away. As there appeared to be only three trucks waiting in the queue I asked Dave what he wanted to do. Stop here on the West German side where we could get a nice Zigeuner schnitzel, chips and a good stein of Bavarian beer. Hopefully, have an early night, a good sleep and make an early start in the morning or carry on and try to make the Czech town of Pilsen, where if it snowed heavily during the night we would be better off stuck in a town rather than in the middle of nowhere.
To decide what to do we tossed a coin, heads we carried on and tales we walked across to that little Bavarian beer stube.
We lost, it was heads, so we went into the German customs house and within twenty minutes both our paperwork, seal checks and tankshein had been completed. We drove down the hill, up the other side and parked behind two Rumanians and a C.S.A.D., which was the Czechoslovakian state owned transport company.
This border on the Czech side we called Rozvadov or Folmova.
I always felt uncomfortable whenever I went through the Iron Curtain, I always felt that I was being watched and I probably was.
I.I.R.C. first of all you came to a traffic light when it changed from red to green you moved slowly forward. You then came up to a sentry box where two armed soldiers with A.K. 47 rifles were stood, sometimes with an Alsatian dog.
There was a metal barrier across the road with red, white and blue stripes the colours of the Czechoslovakian flag. When the soldiers manually lifted the barrier you went forward past two high wire fences with barbed wire along the top. These fences were about twenty foot apart with yellow signs showing a black skull and crossbones with the words “ ACHTUNG MINEN ” ( attention landmines ).The ground between the fences was covered with sand and had been carefully raked over, along the side of the road were pieces of steel girder welded together in a cross shape which could be easily pulled across the road to make a road block, they lay along side the concrete Dragons Teeth or anti tank defences.
You then drove very slowly past an old blue sign with the words I.I.R.C. “ The Socialist People’s Republic of Czechoslovakia ” painted on it. There was a picture of a young man and a woman on it, stood in front of a tractor smiling, staring towards the sky.
This was the first of many propaganda signs that I would see over the next few days. The sign looked like it badly needed a coat of paint and had probably been there for years. In fact it looked like it had been there since the end of the 1940s, the strange thing is that when ever I went into the communist block, I always felt like I was going back forty years in time with all the cobbled roads and the old villages.
As you drove through a chicane of Dragons Teeth you came along side a large steel gantry on your left, where a soldier with an A.K.47 rifle would check the top of your trailer to make sure that there were no holes in the roof. There were two high watch towers each with a powerful searchlight and soldiers with binoculars.
The whole set up looked like a scene out of a world war two prisoner of war film with the forest as a back drop.
It took over two hours to clear the five trucks due to the customs men having a shift change. As we were about to leave Dave noticed two trucks waiting to come into the compound from the West.
Each of the trucks had an luminous headboard, we couldn’t make out the name on the headboards but it seemed that the Dutch and the British companies used them the most. In fact I had heard that it was illegal to use a luminous headboard in West Germany but I never got stopped for having one. While we had been waiting we had taken the time to have a pot noodle and a cup of tea so we were now in the mood to do a couple of more hours driving.
We set off towards the town of Pilsen and after about ten minutes the snow started coming down. We both carried snow chains but as usual we only wanted to use them as a last resort.
Eventually we came to a long uphill climb, the snow was drifting off the Bohemian Hills and was starting to build up on the narrow road. The road was cobbled in places so that it didn’t come as a big surprise when the wheels started spinning. I was near enough in the middle of the road when the M.A.N. 280 came to a standstill, apart from the wheels spinning but we were going nowhere.
I put my overalls on because I had a feeling that I was about to get dirty and wet, I usually did. Because I never kept the same trailer I preferred to keep my chains wrapped around the cross member on the back of the unit instead of in the trailer box. It was freezing outside, the chains were covered in slush and the padlock that kept them secured was frozen, a long blast of W.D. 40 and a couple of hard turns with the key eventually sorted that out.
It was always a lot easier when two people were putting chains on, Dave shone the torch while I scrapped away the snow in front of the offside drive wheels with my ex army fold up shovel that I used to keep underneath the bunk. We laid the chain out and I edged slowly onto it, within ten minutes the chain was on and secure but putting the other chain on became a bit of a pain.
We did exactly the same as the other side but the four locking clips ( or tensioners ) for some reason would not fit into place. We pulled, tugged and swore at the bloody thing but the clips would not fit. I held the torch and Dave had a go but he couldn’t seem to do much better, I tried driving with only one chain on but it just kept spinning on the cobbles, so we decided to have a break and put Dave’s chains on.
There was no problems here and in less than half an hour Dave’s truck was chained up and ready to go, except it was to dangerous to try and get past me without slipping into the ditch at the side of the road.
Our fingers by this time were frozen and we each took turns of putting our fingers over the end of the night heater to try and thaw them out. We hadn’t seen any other vehicles since leaving the border and as nothing had come from the other direction we did wonder if the other side of the hill was blocked.
It was so quite, except for the clicking of the night heater, it was a full moon which lit up the snow covered Bohemian countryside what looked like a Christmas card. Then in the distance we could hear the sound of a truck coming up behind us although it must have been a couple of kilometres away. As it came slowly towards us we realised that there was actually two trucks and a few minutes later we could hear the unmistakable sound which we could tell were Scania 111,s. It had taken them about nearly ten minutes from when we had first heard them, to reaching the bottom of the hill where we were stuck and with their headboards all lit up we could tell that they were two of Alan Dayson’s motors from Carlisle.
We got back into the task of trying to get that bloody chain on, we had already been in the cold for over an hour and the chill factor was getting worse.
After a few minutes we could see the lads below putting their chains on, I had met a couple of Dayson’s men before and they were good lads to run with.
We ended up trying to roll back on to the chain but this didn’t make any difference. By this time at the bottom of the hill the two Dayson’s lads had chained up and were sat in the cab with the light on having a brew.
Dave and I were having another try with that bloody chain when the two lads came walking up the hill towards us, I didn’t recognise them until the one at the front with the bushy beard spoke.
“ What’s the problem ” he asked, with a South Yorkshire accent. “ I can’t get this chain on straight so that the clips will lock ” . I replied.
“ Didn’t we met at the Windmill in Hungary a couple of months ago ” I asked.
“ I can’t remember you meet that many people on this job ” he said. Your names Harry isn’t it and you were on for Whittles last time I saw you. I was, he said but I am on for this lot now, lets have a look at this chain and without further a do he dropped down on his knees into the snow and crawled under the unit behind the rear wheel.
Harry did the same thing, pulling and swearing at the chain but he didn’t come out until he had got the bloody thing on some fifteen minutes later. What was wrong with it I asked ?. I don’t know said Harry, it’s on now and that’s all what matters but when you take them off it might be a good idea to give them a good soaking in diesel. There is a big lay by about two kilometres away I said how about if we all pull in there and retighten the chains, everybody agreed. So I set off in low gear crawling up the hill keeping a close eye on my mirrors to make sure that I had three sets of headlights following me.
We got to the lay by, Dave pulled in behind my truck and Harry moved along side me with his mate behind him. I asked Dave how he was feeling and he said that he was ready to call it a day, fourteen hours for one day was enough anyway.
I asked the Dayson lads what they wanted to do and they said that they wanted to try and get a bit nearer to Prague. It those conditions it would have taken at least two hours, so I told them that we were going to stay the night there and take a chance on it not snowing anymore.
While they were retightening their chains I put the kettle on and opened a packet of Jaffa Cakes, it was the least that I could do.
The four of us sat in my cab drinking tea, Dave and I had opted to use the Komarno border into Hungary as we did not have much weight on. Harry and his mate were using a different border into Hungary where they knew that the weighbridge operator was likely to take a bung if they were overweight.
I don’t know how we got on to it but I remember Harry telling us a story about when he worked for a company in Rotherham.
I am fairly sure that Harry said that this next bit of the story was about him ( or it was about one of his old colleagues. )
Apparently this company had about a hundred flat and coil trailers as they did lots of work for the steelworks at Rotherham, Sheffield and Scunthorpe. One foggy winters morning at about 6 a.m. he had to go up to the trailer park and pick up a flat trailer. The edge of the trailer park sloped down to the River Rother, about fifty feet below and the empty trailers were parked in front of this edge.
Harry found the one he wanted and started to back under it but who ever dropped it had not wound the landing legs down enough and his fifth wheel would not go under. He pulled forward and reversed back, this time using a lot more power which only kept pushing the trailer back until it disappeared down the embankment. He couldn’t see it because of the fog but he had a good idea where it had gone.
He did the right thing and did what most drivers would of done, he went back to the office and said he couldn’t see that trailer on the park. Don’t worry said the night man, its probably still parked up at one of the mills somewhere, take any empty trailer just let me know the number.
It was midday by the time the fog had cleared and the trailer was spotted in the River Rother.
I did hear a similar story several years later but this was the first time that I had heard this one.
I got the impression that Harry had a good knowledge of mechanics, maybe he had been a fitter at one time. I seem to remember that he had half a finger missing, he was certainly a clever guy and not scared of getting his hands dirty.
I only ever saw him with a bushy beard, but I did hear the story a couple of years later about one of Dayson’s drivers who’s gas bottle exploded in his cab while he was parked up at the Mocamp in Istanbul. It was only when I read on Trucknet some twenty years later that it was Harry.
We said good bye that night and said we would catch them up the following day or see them at the Windmill in Kecskamit the day after, but we never did meet up with them again. 
I don’t suppose you were the other Dayson driver were you Klunk ?. 
Also, what a brilliant website you have there Klunk, I really enjoyed the photo’s.
P.S.
If you only believe a quarter of what you read about the Middle East then choose any quarter of this story that you like, I am sure that you will have picked a true bit. 
