Page 91 - Demo

89colour of hydraulic fluid. %u201cWhere are we going?%u201d I asked. He pointed to a parking spot, some distance away over some very undulating ground. I reminded him of our problem, namely that we had no brakes, and asked what was going to happen when we went downhill. %u201cNo problem,%u201d he said, %u201cwe have Ahmed.%u201d %u201cAhmed!%u201d he cried. There appeared a Moroccan fireman, about 5 feet tall and about 3 feet wide, carrying what can only be described as a 2/3 size railway sleeper. %u201cNo problem,%u201d the Chief said, %u201cWhen we go downhill, Ahmed will put the wood ahead of the nose-wheel and take up the slack. Then, when the aircraft has passed, he will pick it up, catch us up and do it again as required%u201d. Not having much say in all of this, I agreed and the rope was tied to the nose wheel. We set off. I was in the cockpit, Brian in the fire truck with Ahmed running alongside the Canberra. All went well. We came to the downhill stretch. Sure enough, the aircraft started to catch up the fire truck. Ahmed heaved the railway sleeper in front of the nose wheel and the Canberra reared up and over it like a good%u2019un. Not wishing to dwell on what this might be doing to the nose wheel, I concentrated on the procession. We came to a long uphill stretch. Half way up, there was an almighty %u201ctwang%u201d and the rope broke! Far from worrying about the nose wheel, it was the rope that was quite literally the weak link in the chain. This was new to me; I was now going backwards downhill with no brakes. Even if I had any, I was reluctant to use them for fear of sitting the Canberra on its tail. We came to the bottom and slowly settled in the hollow. Fire Chief and truck reappeared, tied the rope together, and off we went again, this time without incident, to our parking. The rest of the story is for another time, and involves our lack of passports/IDs/rank insignia/military aircraft combination, and an explanation of this which, I felt, was not wholly believed! I had heard that Moroccan jails had improved a lot in the 70s, but we were, fortunately, allowed a phone call across the Straits. This soon had our engineers on their way in the hydrofoil, with every part of a Canberra hydraulic system they could muster. Suffice to say, the next day, after