Just how bad was driving a carrier?

My Dad was a carrier driver with the 1st Polish Armoured Division Independent Machine Gun Squadron. He wasn't particularly tall at 5ft 10ins. However he was profoundly deaf in his left ear. The Poles had a habit of firing the mounted Vickers MG (the business end of which was about a foot from my Dad's ear) on the move! He said that he didn't so much hear it as feel it fire. Not what was intended by the PTB as the Vickers Machine Gun website desribes the vehicle mount as one for emergency use only- mind you, I suppose that war would count as an emergency!

 

That was the limitation on the English Electric Lightening

 

One of the few war stories my father told me about was his driving test which consisted of a hill start in a Bren Carrier half way up Snowden. To encourage him to get it right, his weekly egg ration was under the rear of the track.

 

My dad was just a kid during WW2 but he saw plenty of universal carriers about, and he states that the crews seemed to love driving them. Perhaps they loved it a bit too much because he reckons that they were incredibly destructive of road surfaces, and so carriers were greatly resented by the local civilian population.

 

Old thread but some carrier driving
best driving part begins at 6:30.

more professional driving, glacis somewhat odd, probably Aussie made