Everything For Free — Venlo, Netherlands | November 1998
“Army Driver Training (B/F)”
“Congratulations wachtmeester, you’ve just successfully concluded your driving test,” says the sergeant-examiner as I drive through the entrance gate of the army’s Driver Training School. What!? That’s a surprise. As far as I know we just finished a final practise round before taking the exam. I ask the sergeant about this and his answer turns out to be the real surprise, “You didn’t strike me as the kind of person who performs well under exam conditions, so I figured you’d do better if we just pretended to practise some more.”
“Ah… but I have passed the exam?” I ask, not completely sure now.
“Yes, yes, if you drive me to the admin building we can finalise the paperwork and you should have your licence tomorrow morning,” the sergeant says as he’s leafing through the stack of forms on his lap.
This is interesting, I appreciate the examiner’s judgement that I don’t do well under exam conditions. Just a three weeks ago I failed my first exam because I hadn’t gotten out of the way of an ambulance, coming up behind me with its sirens screaming, with enough confidence. Actually, the whole two-week driver training had been quite a disaster.
I don’t like driving. Until a couple of months ago I never even considered getting my diver’s licence. I’ve always happily used public transport to get around. But then, after the morning roll call on a rainy Tuesday in September, my platoon commander took me aside.
“You know Van Gaans,” he said, “this presentation you’ve got to give at the Military Academy today means I’ve got to assign you a car and driver… again! Can’t you just get your licence so you can drive yourself?”
“Why don’t you organise it then,” I replied a little tongue-in-cheek, “You know it’s only a two-week training at the Army Driver Training School in Venlo.”
“Yah, that would be great, but your position as fire-director disqualifies you for that course. You’ve got drivers,” said the lieutenant with a sigh, glancing at the three drivers of the Fire-Direction Centre (FDC) group.
This is a typical case of red tape in the army. Because the FDC-group is officer and NCO heavy —concisting of a kornet, an opperwachtmeester, two wachtmeesters and three corporals— I get selected quite often to do things that fall outside of my official duties as a fire-director, I simply don’t have a whole lot to do when we’re at the barracks. Whenever this is something taking place at a different location, like the presentation at the Military Academy in Breda, I’m assigned a car to get there. As I don’t have a driver’s licence, however, I also need a driver.
In theory this isn’t a problem as I’ve got three drivers in my group, but when we’re not in the field, the platoon doesn’t really function in groups anymore. This means that it’s actually quite a hassle for the platoon commander to free up a driver for me. He’s tried to sign me up for driver training before, but his requests have been denied because I have drivers and, therefore, don’t need to drive myself.
A week later though, the lieutenant excitingly joined me for lunch in the mess and announced, “I’ve done it! I got you a spot on the driver training session starting next week.” He handed me the official order to report at the Army Driver Training School. He’d really done it. “By the way, you’re also going to learn how to drive an Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC),” he casually added. Wow! I was going to learn to drive an APC, how cool is that! But why?
“It was the only way to get permission for your B-licence training,” said the lieutenant. He then explained that instead of attempting to sign me up for basic driver training once again, he had applied for the APC training, using the argument that, as the group commander responsible for the correct maintenance of the FDC’s M577 tracked vehicles, I should at least have the same knowledge and experience as the drivers who carry out the day-to-day maintenance. His request had been approved, which meant the army bureaucracy had fallen victim to its own catch-22 red tape.
To obtain the F-licence required for the operation of special vehicles, a driver has to already hold a B-licence for ordinary cars. Because my training for the F-licence had been approved, I automatically qualified for the B-licence training, with priority! My platoon commander had played the bureaucratic system to his own advantage: Bravo! I now very much shared his excitement.
The following week I reported at the Army Driver Training School in the southern city of Venlo and two weeks of disaster began. The first couple days were fine, the theory classes were simple and I already knew most of the traffic rules anyway. But then we started driving. I had never really driven anything motorised before and so to suddenly sit 6-8 hours a day behind the wheel of a 4×4 with an impatient instructor next to you was quite a nerve-wracking experience. My instructor had the annoying habit of pointing out things I had done wrong after I’d already figured them out myself. On more than one occasion I parked my car on the side of the road, demanding some cooling down time.
The Monday of the second week of the course, as we were speeding down the motorway, my vision suddenly disappeared: everything turned into a foggy white smear. “I can’t see anything sergeant,” I said to my instructor.
“What do you mean, you can’t see anything?” the instructor asked, clearly irritated but also with a worrying undertone in his voice.
“I mean that I literally CAN’T SEE ANYTHING!” now it was my turn to be irritated. This got the message through. I felt the instructor grabbing the steering wheel, applying the breaks and pulling the car over.
Once he was convinced I wasn’t messing with him, we swapped seats and he drove me to a nearby eye hospital where the doctors concluded that some kind of chemical (?) had completely blurred my vision. My eyes were cleaned up and there wasn’t any serious damage but I did lose two precious days of training.
That Friday, the day of the exam, I was too nervous and with an ambulance seemingly coming from nowhere, demanding its right of way, I panicked. I failed the exam.
But that was then and this is now. Thanks to a sensible examiner, I’ve now passed the exam and will be picking up my driver’s licence tomorrow morning. Then on to the Manoeuvres Training Centre to learn to drive an APC!
K’s Choice – Every Thing For Free on Cocoon Crash [CD]. Brussels, Belgium: Double T. (1998)
This autobiographical sketch comes from my bundle In the Moment: A Disjointed Audiobiography which is available at Amazon.com. (USD 9.50 for a paperback or USD 4.50 for the Kindle version)
