David Benson's Story
DAY by DAY (Part 1)
This is a great story as David recounts many incidents that occurred during the Marathon. Although it constitutes a "long read",
you will be more than satisfied after you have finished reading his account (in 2 parts.)
David Benson was a reporter for London's Daily Express at the time of the Marathon
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One team was almost out of the rally only 20 minutes away from Crystal Palace. Swiss driver Axel Beguin in a Renault could not find his control book, needed at all checkpoints.
He said: "I hitched a lift from a motor-cyclist who kindly took me all the way back to Crystal Palace. I couldn't find the book there and was frantic. I hitched another lift back to the car and discovered it was under the seat all the time."
The all-Welsh team led by Bill Bengry, whose Cortina was first off the start line, had a surprise on the Dover road. As they slowed for a roundabout, somebody pushed a letter through the open window and said: "Please deliver that in Sydney for us."
Teams spent the 75 minute Channel crossing checking road maps and sleeping schedules. Drivers due to take the wheel for the first section of the journey snatched a few winks of sleep. Others stocked up with duty-free cigarettes, cigars and (a few) with spirits. "We'll need this to keep going towards the end of the journey," said one.
Public interest was already becoming intense. French newsmen and television crews crowded the reception hall as the Maid of Kent steamed into Calais. And cheering crowds lined the route as the 98 cars, leaving the Customs hall at one-minute intervals, sped off into the night.
A star attraction for the French was the biggest and the oldest car in the Marathon - the eight litre 1930 Bentley tourer, driven by Keith Schellenberg and Norman Barclay. An unexpected hazard on the road to Paris was fog, at times slowing cars to walking pace. It certainly wasn't welcomed by Grand Prix racing driver Innes Ireland and his teammates. They had to drive 150 miles on sidelights when their Mercedes had generator trouble.
Hardest hit were the Australians, many of whom had never even seen fog before. David McKay in a Holden got lost twice. Others said they would rather face the Nullarbor Desert back home than these sudden blinding patches on the road. More trouble came over a French police ruling that banned rally cars from the motorway route into Paris. Most crews were aware of this and had planned alternative routes. But some, mostly Australians, were surprised to find themselves shunted on to B roads through small villages. The Aussies called President de Gaulle some rude names that night.
Luck was with the early starters, however. They missed the fog and a few nipped undetected down the motorway, arriving at le Bourget control with time in hand for a coq au vin at the airport restaurant. Cheer of the night came for a British entered Porsche which, alongside spare wheels and suitcases, carried an immaculately rolled umbrella on its roofrack. "Hurrah pour les Anglais," laughed the crowd.
PARIS - TURIN - BELGRADE
Dense fog and ice patches on the road made the going hazardous for drivers as they carried on through the early morning for Turin. There were delays at Mt Blanc Tunnel where Customs men, enforcing de Gaulle's new controls, insisted on checking through the drivers' money. In the Tunnel itself - seven miles long, overtaking prohibited - one British team trying to pass a slow lorry was courteously reminded by a policeman that there is no driving on the left.
Daylight on Monday revealed crowds of excited onlookers lining the autostrada across northern Italy - and some minor breakdowns. A Russian Moskvitch was held up by transmission failure. Peter Harper's Ford Cortina broke down near Venice with water pump trouble. The MGB sponsored by Nova magazine needed emergency repairs to its overdrive and starter motor. And Patrick Lindsay, co-driver of the open Bentley, was dismayed to find his special arctic survival suit had fallen overboard during the night, "I hope I don't freeze in Afghanistan." He said.
Unluckiest of all were Ford's tough Swedish team of Bengt Soderstrom and Gunnar Palm. Their Lotus Cortina limped into Turin control four hours early but with a broken engine. A vital cog in the overhead camshaft drive had collapsed. In Britain the part would only cost 35s. But with a swift telephone check round northern Italy revealed that there were only three similar cars registered in the whole area. Eventually one was tracked down in a back street used car lot. The owner brought it to the control point and demanded £100 for the tiny cog wheel. Soderstrom paid up. He said: "I would rather pay £100 now than drop out of the rally - and that fellow knew it. I hope he is never in the same kind of trouble himself."
Late that night mechanics were still working desperately to put the engine right, but the drivers weren't worried by the delay. They had plenty of time in hand to reach Belgrade. There was an anguished moment too for the drivers of a French Citroen. After clocking in at Turin, they booked into a nearby motel for a few hours sleep, leaving their passports at the desk. When it came to check-out time, the motel found their passports had been given to another team by mistake.
Many crews decided to press straight on for Belgrade. Taking full advantage of fast roads, they hoped to arrive with time in hand for servicing, resting and eating before going on to tackle the tougher terrain to the east.
But there were lighter moments. "Gelignite" Jack Murray of BMC Australia's team, one of the characters of the Marathon - had left London with a 15lbs. plum pudding specially sent up from down under. He said: "I was carving up a bit for my co-drivers on the road to Belgrade when we passed Stewart McLeod in his Alfa. His two mates were asleep and he looked very tired, so I signalled to him if he would like some pudding. He nodded, so at 80 miles an hour we pulled alongside and I handed a piece to him through the window. My pudding is disappearing fast, I've only got 7lbs. of it to last me to Bombay."
Most of the teams took less than 12 hours to cover the 720 mile section to Belgrade, where big crowds were waiting to give them their biggest welcome of the rally so far.
The Australian Amoco team of Volvos found a neat answer to the problem of fuel, which was expected to deteriorate in quality as the cars got further east. Cans of high-grade petrol were waiting at the frontier to take them across Yugoslavia. But it was on this, the last of the "easy" European sections, that the first serious crash came.
In the early hours of Tuesday morning a Vauxhall Ventora driven by Cecil Woodley left the road just 100 miles from Belgrade. A driver close behind said: " He must have been doing 90 miles an hour when he veered down a bank into soft mud. The car rolled three times. We stopped. The lights and ignition were still on and petrol was pouring from the tanks. I expected the car to blow up at any moment. Some Yugoslavs helped us get the crew out".
It turned out that Woodley had flicked a cigarette out of the window and it had blown back onto his sleeping co-driver. He turned to grab it before it burned anything and the car swerved off the road. Woodley, who had broken his shoulder, was given a lift into Belgrade for urgent medical attention, reluctantly leaving his team-mates with the problem of towing their wrecked car out of the country before the Yugoslavs demanded import duty. By 10 a.m. cars were scattered all over the city as drivers grabbed their last sleep before the start of the "real rally" - the 5,000 mile run to Bombay.
ISTANBUL - SIVAS - TEHERAN
Peter Sargent's Chrysler Valiant estate car didn't get as far as Istanbul. Just outside, as they moved out to overtake a lorry, they were side-swiped by a lorry coming in the opposite direction. The driver following behind said: "After the two vehicles touched, the lorry skidded sideways and I thought it was going to write off the next six cars in the Marathon. I don't know how it missed us all." Soderstrom and Palm's valiant sprint was also brought to an end on this section - by poor Turkish petrol. Their Lotus Cortina was forced to retire with a burned out piston. Though it was over smooth dirt, heavy rains could make it perilously slippery. There was another danger for drivers too - children throwing stones at the cars as they sped through Turkish villages. A number of cars turned up later in Sivas with smashed windows and dented bodies.
Husband and wife team Nick and Jenny Brittan had a narrow escape just 100 miles before Sivas. A horse dashed in front of them when they were travelling at 80 miles an hour, smashing a wing and the windscreen. They completed the journey to Sivas wearing goggles, but it was freezing cold.
A fractured oilpipe brought the stately progress of the 1930 Bentley to a halt. Driver Schellenberg said: "It took us hours to find a Turkish garage that understood what needed to be done. But we decided to do the job properly as this is a valuable car and we didn't want to break it up."
Graham White, secretary of the British Automobile Racing Club, had the unluckiest break of all. After negotiating tortuous roads and flying stones without a scratch, he fell down a pit at Sivas control while searching for a lavatory. After being given a pain-killing drug, he pressed on, but eventually at Erzincan officials decided he was too ill to continue and took him to hospital.
Control in Sivas was a quagmire, with drivers and cars slipping in thick mud around the service station. John Sprinzel, still going strong in his MG Midget, the smallest car in the rally, said as he pulled in: "I think at least half of the survivors here will be knocked out before we reach Kabul."
Directly ahead of them now was the first big "killer" section - the fast 170 mile run up a winding mountain trail to Erzincan in the dark. Up till now there had been an alternative southern route. But tonight the problem was solved - rains had completely washed away the southern road. Everybody had to go north. Even the most optimistic competitor expected to lose points. Yet it was here that Roger Clark made his break from the rest of the field, completing the section at an average of nearly 60 miles an hour to lose only six minutes in time. His nearest rival was Simo Lampinen in a German Ford, eight minutes behind.
The full horror of that night, with rain, sleet and snow, and a terrible pounding for the cars, only emerged when the count was taken the next day. David McKay, in one of the Sydney Telegraph Holdens, said: "We came to a blind crest. George Reynolds said the road went left, David Liddle thought it went right. I went straight ahead. We ended up in a paddock, narrowly missing three other cars, which had also ploughed off. But we were still mobile - unlike the tiny Dutch DAF which had holed the sump."
Bobby Buchanan-Michaelson's Mercedes ran off the road and damaged its gear linkage. To repair it, co-driver Max Stahl lay on his back in three inches of mud while the others protected him from sleet, at 4,000 ft above sea levels. Then it was discovered the radiator was pierced. Bobby hitched a lift on a lorry 40 miles to Erzincan to locate a repairer. Then he rode 40 miles by taxi to get the dismantled radiator, took it 40 miles back to Erzincan to be welded, then 40 miles back to refit it, in a blinding snowstorm.
Doug Morris in a Vauxhall Ventora had to go to hospital after a jack slipped when he was working under the car, but he was allowed to continue after treatment. This section also ended the valiant drive of the Bentley boys - Patrick Lindsay broke his shoulder when the car slithered down an embankment.
More trouble cam on the road to Teheran. Duncan Bray spent hours getting a half-shaft replaced on his Lotus Cortina, then within two miles, hit an unlit bus, which shot out from a side street. The crew went to court, and the bus driver was ordered to forfeit his wages. The car, thought at first to be a write-off, went on after a heavy lorry was used to pull out the battered front.
TEHERAN - KABUL
All Thursday afternoon, as the temperature dropped to freezing, mud-caked cars streamed into Teheran service station to be handed over to mechanics, while weary drivers headed for showers and foam mattresses. An exception to the dust-covered faces was Ireland's Rosemary Smith, immaculate as ever with blonde hair falling over shoulders below a scarlet cap. She and her French co-driver Lucette Pointet, were the first women's crew in their Lotus Cortina.
They were closely followed by a Volvo driven by racing driver Jennie Tudor-Owen. Her co-driver, 21 year old Anthea Owen, said: "That trip from Sivas to Erzincan was awful. It was only thanks to Jennie that we got through in one piece and only 62 minutes late."
Spectator interest was building up with every mile the cars travelled east. Teheran was no exception. Tens of thousands packed the streets to cheer competitors on. One driver said: "The whole of Asia Minor seems to have gone Marathon mad." Another said: "Many of the locals have never seen cars drive in the daytime with their headlights on as a safety precaution. Some young blokes had fun roaring up and down the streets emulating us."
By 2 a.m. 80 cars had reached Teheran. One late arrival was the 17th/21st Lancers' Land Rover. Lieut. Gavin Thompson said: "Everything is going fine. We are just not fast enough."
By then crews had already set off on the longest single haul of the Marathon - the 1,500-mile stretch to Kabul, capital of Afghanistan. Again the alternative desert route had been closed because of flood damage. Only the Northern route through the Elburz Mountains was open.
Disaster struck soon enough. In the small hours Peter Wilson's crew returned by taxi to say their Ford Corsair had been wrecked 60 miles along the road to Kabul. Co-driver Ian Mackelden said: "We were overtaking a Mercedes on a bend when the camber proved too steep and we rolled over twice before a stanchion stopped us going down a 50ft drop."
The fast, heavy Australian-built Holdens, which had dropped points on the twisting mountain roads, now came into their own on the long straight run across eastern Persia and Afghanistan. First into Kabul was the Sydney Telegraph team led by Harry Firth. Close behind was fellow-Australian David McKay. He said: " In each town people packed the sides of the road and we have experienced some uncertain moments when small children have run out in front of us. But to take the lead it was a question of steeling ourselves to the task and letting the crowds make their own arrangements about getting out of our way. Through Kandahar we picked up a police escort. But instead of arresting us, he led us with siren blaring at 100 miles an hour out of town."
Other drivers weren't so lucky. BMC works driver Tony Fall suffered a setback shortly after Teheran when the suspension of his Austin 1800 collapsed. Another BMC driver, Rauno Aaltonen, drove almost the whole way to Kabul with the front end of his car held together by wire and masking tape after plunging into a ditch. He and co-driver Henry Liddon used the car's winches to pull the front bodywork out of the driver's compartment. But both cars stayed in the rally.
Innes Ireland's Mercedes, despite a rear tyre blow-out at 100 miles an hour, was the third car to screech to a halt on the outskirts of Kabul - and it was only the our-skirts. For the cars were slowed to a walking pace on the last five miles into the city centre as they cut their way through a sea of brown men in turbans and heavily veiled women. As an American resident said: "For 2,000 years they have been waiting for the 20th Century. This is it."
It was the wildest welcome of the Marathon yet. Around the control point, police repeatedly charged the crowd as they pressed 20 deep round the cars, screaming and hitting the bodywork. Fighting broke out when a uniformed guard at the elegant Spinzar Hotel tried to drive the crowd away from the entrance with a whip.
But by Friday night, only 33 cars had reached Kabul control within their allotted times. The saddest task for control Marshalls was to inform Robbie Uniack that his wife had been killed that day in a car crash in Britain. He flew back home at once, putting his BMW 2000 officially out of the rally, though it continued on.
KABUL - SAIROBI - DELHI
In Kabul too, Marathon organisers were surprised to hear that the Afghan authorities had been making repairs to the road on the notorious Lataband Pass, specially chosen for its ruggedness. A charming apology note said: "We hope you will not sue us for playing foul."
The Pass, a flint road that twists down from Kabul's freezing cold to near-tropical Sairobi on the way to the Khyber and Pakistan, had been described beforehand as "enough to shatter the illusions of the toughest competitors." But in improving the surface, the Afghans also loosened it and added a further discomfort - dust. This rose hundreds of feet into the still air as the cars slid round the Lataband's treacherous bends. It was dust in everything, dust for breakfasts at Sairobi control. "It's the Grey and White Marshalls Show," said an official tartly.
This tough section was sorting out even the best of the field. Paddy Hopkirk lost five minutes in his works BMC 1800. "Thank God that's over," he muttered as he signed in at control. Roger Clark lost five minutes too, though with a total of only 11 penalties, he was still holding a clear lead. But of course the Lataband took its toll.
Zasada's Porsche arrived dramatically on three tyres and a rim, shredding rubber wildly. Australian Bob Holden's Volvo came in, appropriately, like a kangaroo, its rear shock absorbers useless although new ones were fitted only the previous night. The village beyond control became a teeming garage area as crews struggled to repair Lataband damage before the Khyber Pass.
Rosemary Smith's Ford Cortina was running on three cylinders after a cylinder burnt out - the same trouble that put Soderstrom's Cortina out. But mechanics removed the offending piston and she drove on with the other three.
Army Majors Freddy Preston and Mike Bailey, who had already been delayed by a broken suspension to their Rover 2000 in Persia, had more trouble in Kandahar with the other half of their suspension. This time they transferred all the tools and spare tyres from the boot, to the bonnet, and Mike Bailey, wrapped in a sleeping bag, rode for three and a half hours on the kangaroo bar in front of the car to minimise the strain on the rear of the car. It was probably the "hairiest" ride of the whole Marathon.
David Benson
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Home I A Tale Of Two Cities I How It All Began I The Entrants I The Rules I Timetable I The Route I Their Story I Photo Albums
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The Ladies I How They Finished I BMC I Ford I Holden I Other Marques I Site Map I Memorabilia I Credits/About Us I Links
