ROBERT LESLEY ‘BOB’ CARTER WAS BORN ON 2 JULY 1938 in Melton, Suffolk. One of five children, his Father Lesley owned a small local haulage company that operated out of The Cherry Tree pub in Bromeswell, a couple of miles down the road.

He was educated firstly at Melton village school, and then at a school in Ipswich. He didn’t enjoy his time in education, preferring to be working with his hands on something mechanical.

“The best time for me was the school holidays, when I could hang around my dad’s haulage yard,” he recalled. “One favourite highlight for me would be when me and my brothers used to go with dad to Rush Green Motors for him to look at second-hand trucks. ‘Tubby’ Green, the owner, used to give us a pound note and tell us to, “Bring the old bugger back again!”

In 1953, at the age of 15, Bob left school and started working for the family company as a yard boy, making tea and running errands on his bike.

“It was like getting paid for what I used to do in the school holidays! Back in those days you didn’t really think about what career path you were going to follow when you left school. For example, if your dad was a bricklayer, you could end up being a bricklayer, or a chef’s son might follow his father’s profession, that’s just how it was. So it didn’t even cross my mind about doing anything other than getting involved in the family company,” says Bob.

A large amount of Carter’s work involved tipper trucks working on the local RAF base at Bentwaters, and Bob would often go and spend the day up there driving a small tipper truck. As he was driving on private land, having no licence was not an issue.

This was the time when National Service was still compulsory, and Bob’s signup date was looming. However, if you were involved in a job of national importance, i.e. agriculture or coal mining, you could apply for special dispensation to exempt you, something a number of the local farmers’ children had claimed.

Bob decided that rather than be conscripted into a job in the Army that he didn’t have any interest in, he would sign up early of his own accord, which would then enable him to choose his own career path.

“I was 17 and decided that as I enjoyed working on heavy vehicles the most suitable job for me would be in the REME (Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers)”.

Having been accepted, Bob was sent to Blandford Forum in Dorset for his basic training, and on completion he was then temporarily posted to Taunton in Somerset, before being moved to Herford in Germany for his first proper posting in a Light Aid Detachment, or LAD: 118 Company RASC.

Depending on Army requirements, Bob’s LAD was attached to various REME companies. It was tasked with things such as escorting convoys in case of breakdowns and covering general repairs.

Bob’s attitude to life was slightly different to a lot of people in that many will tell you to “never volunteer for anything”, but he was just the opposite.

“If there were courses coming up, I would always volunteer to go on them. For example, I completed a fuel injection course in Duisburg, followed by a heavy plant course back in Bordon, Hampshire, which enabled me to get back to England for a little while. My view was it would be useful to maximize my mechanical knowledge while someone else was paying for it!”

Back in Germany, after completing his courses, he was driving in the Harz mountains on an Army recovery job and thought he would give his sergeant a bit of a scare.

Driving a Scammell Pioneer recovery truck, more commonly known by anyone who drove one as a ‘pot boiler’, while towing two Austin K9 ‘wireless wagons’, he decided to take it out of gear and get up a little bit more speed. Scammells generally had a top speed of around 28mph, although the drivers would often attach a piece of string on to the throttle that would take it up to about 35mph.

As the speed increased, Bob realized that he was struggling to get it back into gear and the vehicle was accelerating out of control! Luckily for Private Bob Carter, with his local knowledge of the roads he managed to steer it into an escape lane and bring the lot to a stop. His plan had worked, and the sergeant was scared witless, as was Bob!