He’s Keeping the Past Alive in His Own Backyard

Once he had a boat, then a plane. Now Frank Haigler searches the world over for rusty, dusty chunks of usually olive green metal, rotting leather and shredded rubber.

After 15 years and about $125,000 worth of collecting, Haigler’s backyard in Fullerton is a warehouse for his “toys”: a real 1918 Renault tank, a 1940 Chrysler Army staff car; a German halftrack motorcycle and sidecar used at the Russian front; a 1942 Harley Davidson shaft-drive motorcycle, an amphibious Jeep and assorted armored and command cars from World War II. All 15 of his military vehicles can be driven, and all but one are disarmed. It’s a cannon for which Haigler has a permit but no shells.

Haigler, a former obstetrician and WW II Marine commander, also had a 32-ton Sherman tank until last month when he sold it to a Ventura County investor for “tens of thousands” of dollars. (Both he and the buyer decline to disclose the price.) It’s a hobby that takes some getting used to. “Let’s put it this way,” said his wife, Pat. “I’ve learned to live with it.”

Haigler, 67, served in Okinawa and participated in the Normandy invasion, but says he’s no military nut.

“If you talk to anybody in the active service, they hate it. As the years go by, nostalgia creeps in and you forget the bad things; you remember the good things. A certain interest builds up. . . . “

Haigler also has a 1,000-book library on both world wars, as well as a collection of swords, rifles, machine guns, submachine guns, knives, cutlasses, model tanks and planes in his basement.

Driving the military vehicles made him feel important at first, he says. Besides paying for itself, his hobby gives him something back, Haigler figures. “It’s better than real estate. You can’t play with an apartment house or get ego satisfaction from an empty lot in Fallbrook.”

He also worries that too many young people are ignorant of history. He placed a war-era sticker--”Remember Pearl Harbor”--on the window of one vehicle.

Haigler’s vehicle collection started growing after he bought the Sherman tank at an MGM auction--it had been used in movies after the war years--and other collectors started calling him, he said. He was a charter member of the Military Vehicle Collectors Club, now the 10,000-member International Military Vehicle Collectors Club, based in Thornton, Colo.

California has 1,200 members, England 800 and Italy 600, president Pat Smith of Vancouver, B.C., said in a telephone interview. The Soviet Union has one member, he said. Some collections are much larger than Haigler’s. “A chap in Belgium has something like 170 (vehicles),” Smith said. “Some lads in the U.S. have 30.” The late actor Steve McQueen kept a 30-vehicle collection at his home, he said.

The organization holds annual conventions and publishes “Supply Line,” a newsprint magazine for buyers and sellers of military vehicles and parts and a slick-covered magazine, “Army Motors,” with articles such as “In Defense of the WW II Jeep Combat Wheel.”

Members are interested in preserving history, but military vehicles are highly prized for their own qualities. They are “the ultimate 4-wheel-drive vehicle,” Smith said. “No other vehicle can come near them for traction, pulling, for reliability.”

Of the hundreds of thousands of armored cars, cranes, cargo vehicles, bulldozers and tanks used in WW II, most were left overseas, says David Cole, staff curator for property in the U.S. Army Center of Military History in Washington. Some were turned over to the governments of countries they were left in to be used in construction or agriculture. Many wound up in military target ranges where they were used as practice targets for bombing raids, he says.

Growing Interest

Interest in collecting WW II militaria has been growing since the 1970s, Cole says. “There’s a fascination for the period for some reason,” he said. “The fact that they’re being collected by Americans is saying in a sense, we won. The spoils of victory, if you want to put it that way.”

The period exudes a certain glamour, Haigler believes, but also attracts “fringe characters” and “paramilitary nuts.”

It’s a period many others would rather forget. Eight years ago, Haigler said, he drove one of his restored German motorcycles with a swastika insignia on it to a dog show and was called a “Nazi” by an outraged man whose relatives had died in concentration camps. Instead of being restored, the motorcycle should be been junked and burned, the man said.

“Because I (restored) the original markings on it doesn’t mean I believe in it,” Haigler said. “I’m striving for authenticity is all I’m doing.”

Germans customized military vehicles differently than the United States, he said, pointing to hand and foot warmers in the motorcycle handles and in the side cars. “They were to keep them from freezing at the Eastern front. No motorcycle like that could be built economically today.

“This piece here I spent two years looking for,” he said, holding up a piece of green metal with holes in it. “It’s a skid plate so the rocks won’t come through. I paid a couple hundred for it. Little things like that are really rare.”

Once swept away by enthusiasm over a line of 25 modern Army tanks in the desert near Yermo, Haigler said, “I went crazy. I started swiping stuff.” As he was dragging a steel tow cable through the fence, a highway patrolman stopped and asked, “What are you doing?”

Telephoned an Apology

Haigler admitted he had no permission to be there. The patrolman let him go, he says, with the words, “The FBI will be contacting you.”

Later, in embarrassment, Haigler says, he telephoned an apology to the senior officer at Ft. Irwin, 40 miles north of Barstow. He says he never heard any more about the incident.

Haigler believes he will only break even financially with his hobby though some military vehicles have appreciated significantly.

Smith, president of the collectors club, says he has heard of collectors paying as much as $60,000 for a Sherman tank and $45,000 for a DUKW, a wartime amphibious vehicle, pronounced “duck.” Hitler’s Mercedes limousine fetched $169,000, he said.

Operating manuals are also in demand, selling for $50 to $100 apiece, Haigler says. Some private publishers have begun to reprint them. His basement closet is full of yellowed, water-stained technical books to help him restore and operate the vehicles.

Haigler knows the huge, heavy tanks are not really toys. A year ago, his wife Pat climbed into the turret of their Sherman tank at a car-crushing demonstration at a San Bernardino car show. She didn’t brace herself during a turn and broke a rib, he said.

Another time, a friend of his, another tank collector, forgot to wear a helmet when driving his own tank, and the hatch came down and fractured his skull. The man’s girlfriend lost her fingers in the same type of accident, Haigler says.

The neighbors have complained only once--when the Haiglers were bringing several vehicles back from Hollywood where they had been rented out for a commercial, said Pat. “That was years ago,” she said.

Neighborhood children love to come over and play with the vehicles. But sometimes, they turn on the ignition and run the batteries down.

“It’s a never-ending problem keeping them all running,” Haigler said. “I’m not as agile as I was several years ago.” For that reason, he plans to eventually sell the collection.

At the same time, he has his eye on a new acquisition. “I didn’t think he could find anything bigger than a tank. Boy, was I wrong,” said Pat.

Now he is considering buying a 1941 caboose from the Santa Fe Railroad.

“I don’t mind the caboose,” she said. “We can convert it to a guest room or something.”