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A trip to Berlin.

Yes, that Berlin.

It is December 1993, I had been in Germany for 6 months, my first wife and I finally had our married quarter so she could join me in Germany, and we could start buying all the things we thought we needed to make us happy.

A week before Christmas I was called into the Chief's office. I need you to go Berlin he told me.

A jet had diverted and its emergency kit had life expired. Or one part of it: the safety matches.

Safety matches are the same matches that you Dad used to light his filter tips with, nothing special. And these bere in the emergency pack, and a box of matches (10p from your local corner shop) had to be replaced.

The jet had landed at RAF Gatow, where all the planes for the Berlin Airlift had landed, and which the RAF was going to hand over back to Germany in a few months. They had no resident aircraft, so no stores fo explosives, and as mad as it may sound, safety matches were classed as explosives. Not high explosives, but rules is rules.

So, I was told to cme into work the next day in civillian clothes, and a car would come and drive me to Berline, bring an overnight bag.

So it was.

Rules being rules meant that transporting hazardous cargo it meant that along with the driver and the person responsible for the goods (me) there had to be an armed RAF policeman.

The three of us, one armed with a loaded 9mm pistol, and a box of matches in a locked red tin were loaded into the former staff car of the Station Commander of RAF Gütersloh, a top of the range Austin Montego, that was looking tired a few years ofter being delivered. Unlike most cars, it had fitting on the bonnet for a staff flag, and the car came complete with a set of UK military plates, and German civillian plates.

As we were on the Queen's business, normal rules of the road didn't apply to us, we could go as fast as the driver wanted. And he wanted to go as fast as possible. We did the trip in under 4 hours I seem to remember. I don't know if you have driven in Germany, but you can go as fast as you like on the autobahns, but we could go faster than that. And did. In blizzards.

Towns and cities zipped by, we crossed over into the old East and the quality of the road changed. But the driver prossed on and we were pressed back into the seats.

At Berlin there is a motorway that rings the city, we should have turned west, to the old western part. But the driver turned east.

So there we were, in a UK military car, with an armed and uniformed policeman in the back, driving past miles and miles of barracks still filled with Russian soldiers as the fall of the Soviet Union had not been felt here yet. We could have been arrested, held in military prison, but we were not stopped.

We arrived at Gattow, handed over the red box and now unloaded pistol at the stores.

Its the last Suplier Squadron Christmas Party tonight, you are all invited.

Sweet.

There was also a huge Christmas market on in the centre of Berlin, to the driver swapped the plates on the car over. This was legal he told us. And we drive into the city centre, parked and wandered the Christmas market, drank gluhwein and gernally acted like tourists.

We drive back, went to the mess and had dinner of something very British, I suspect.

Then went to the station family's club and got royally drunk.

We had no idea how to find our accommodation at midnight, but the nice RAF Police were waiting with their VW van and took us back to our transit rooms and we slept like babies.

And in the morning, we did the return trip, nursing handovers, with the driver going even faster as he wanted to get back to Laarbruch where it was his squadron's Christmas party that night.

I was just glad to have survived both trips.