COMBAT AND COMPETITION.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

COMBAT AND COMPETITION
caught the train to Church Stretton where Teddy Proll the Polish
ground engineer would be waiting with a truck.
For most of the enthusiastic young members in those days it was
public transport or else and there were those who thought nothing to
walking the five miles or so uphill, from the railway station, at the end
of a working week. Motor cycles ranging from elderly vintage models,
with angular tanks and narrow tyres, to the most modern postwar
machines were popular with the less impecunious and some even
aspired to four wheels.
John Holder, son of a baronet and one of the regulars, settled for
three. Heir to Holders Brewery, he was learning his trade at Mitchells
and Butlers in Smethwick, and his weakness for bright red motor cars
of allegedly sporting performance had found expression in an air
cooled Morgan.
On many a night we ran down to the Bridges Inn at Ratlinghope -
the locals pronounced it 'Ratchup' - with three on board the Morgan,
two in the cockpit and one astride the tail. Quite illegal. But no worse
than the neighbouring farmers on their unlicensed tractors. Of course
that was in the days of the friendly policeman who often visited the
clubhouse and always announced his departure with the words:
"Must be off to Ratchup to see to a leaking tap!"
A country bobby of the old school, he knew that they kept strange
hours under the northwest corner of the Mynd, and never failed to
warn them when the inspector was on his rounds.
It was said that the Morgan would pitch forward, and end up
inverted, if you braked too hard. But we reasoned that the chap riding
the tail moved the CG aft. For all that it was dicey, sitting out there
in the open, hanging on to the hood. Particularly so on the return
journey, with John talking nineteen to the dozen, while the back end
slithered around and the loose gravel underneath sounded like bursting
flak.
There were frequent visitors - amongst them Sandy Saunders, a
Wing Commander, full of outlandish ideas and just old enough to have
been a prewar member. Sandy had a slight lisp which became
pronounced when he was excited and Theo, who had taught him at one
stage during his RAF training as well, recalled some of his efforts with
wry amusement.
"One day, right in the middle of an exercise, under a sky full of
cumulus, he suddenly spoke up Thir, may I thwottle back and take
advantage of thith thermal'. It was as if he was quite deliberately
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