Some of my first drives did not go well

When I joined the military in 1979, I did not have my driver's license. But in the military, they train you how to drive and give you a special qualification on a piece of paper called a DND-404. It's basically a military vehicle driver's license. It lists the kind of vehicles you've been trained to operate and to start with, I was allowed to drive a staff car (black military sedan), a jeep and any truck up to (I think) one and a half ton. Before I get to the embarrassing part, let me just say that my training included a defensive driving course, whose principles have definitely saved my life a few times. One thing they didn't teach, as you will see, is off-road driving.

So here I am, still wet behind the ears in my first posting in an Army unit, and they actually trusted me with my own vehicle, a 5/4 ton 4 x 4 truck with a repair office pod mounted on the back where the cargo bed would go (such as what's pictured).

When I joined my first unit, we weren't scheduled to go on any exercises out in the boonies (military training areas in the middle of nowhere) for a long while, so the only driving experience I had was our semi-weekly road convoys that our squads would organize on Friday mornings to keep the trucks from seizing up sitting in a parking lot for weeks on end. But these road convoys were the epitome of boring. I needed to stretch my driving legs.

So one morning I decided, without permission, to take my 5/4 ton out for some off-road experience. I'm 20 years old and I have a 4 x 4! So I casually drive out of the vehicle compound. I don't even recall how I pulled that off because every time you leave the compound with a vehicle, you have to explain at the main gate to a duty guard what you're doing. I said I was headed to the POL point (military gas station) to fill the tank. It worked, because off we went. Me and my truck.

I head to the POL point, because well, if you say you're going somewhere, you should at least be able to prove that you did at least that much. Then I headed to the northeast corner of the base, down a road that leads past a garbage dump into a mostly wooded training area. The road ended and turned into a dirt track with very deep ruts where the wheels of hundreds of heavy military vehicles had been. And in very short order, I got stuck. 'High-centred' is the term. My differentials were nicely hung up onto the high points between the ruts and my wheels no longer had enough traction to go anywhere. Well done. I had barely even made it far into the training area and I was already hosed.

So, tail between my legs, I walked the kilometre or so back to my compound, leaving the truck where it was, all the while trying to figure out how I was going to get myself out of this mess. I figured I should just go straight to the guys with the recovery vehicles (military tow trucks) and get help. The fewer people involved, the better. That was the right call, because they felt sorry for me and helped me out without telling my superiors. We drove out in the recovery truck and hauled my 5/4 ton out of the ruts and he followed me back to the compound to make sure I didn't get into any more trouble. I quietly parked the truck in its reserved spot and that was the end of the adventure. I did go back out into the training area eventually, but the next time I made sure to go with other colleagues in their trucks. And I made sure to stay out of the ruts.