Trusty Jeep Jogs More Memories

As I expected, my eulogy for the jeep, which is being honorably discharged from service in the U.S. Army, stirred many fond memories of that sturdy vehicle.

A GI who had access to a jeep was, as I suggested, a very lucky GI. A jeep meant access to nearby towns, and, the ultimate, to nearby girls.

Wilfred H. Shaw of Hermosa Beach recalls his “love affair” with a jeep that he had acquired late in the Pacific war through a series of improbable circumstances and sheer good luck.

In fact, it was a Navy jeep, delivered by an errant God to his very door; with the help of friends, he soon repainted it in Air Corps colors and gave it a fake serial number.

It was not an improper use of government resources, he insists, since his job frequently took him to nearby air bases and to the harbor in search of lost shipments. “Truthfully, however, it also sure helped in getting to the beach, and was a real hit with the nurses and the occasional USO performer.”

Transferred to the Philippines when the war ended, Shaw left his beloved jeep in the care of another civilian friend. Returning weeks later, he found that the friend had also been transferred, “and had managed to squeeze that prize aboard the C-46 that carried him away.”

Shaw says he later received the Bronze Star for his work on an aircraft repair station on Iwo Jima during the invasion, “but I’d rather think it was in appreciation of my months of loving care for that purloined Navy jeep.”

Howard Seelye of Fallbrook is moved by my story of using a jeep on Maui when I was with the 4th Marine Division, to recall a visit he and his wife made some years ago to Makawao, a little cowboy town near our divisional campsite. The natives were having their annual festive roundup, and a remnant of the 4th Division had come to celebrate.

“There was a parade . . . and amidst the usual school bands, horsemen and women, funny bike riders and others, here came the 4th Division. Some had veterans organization caps on, some baseball caps; they were paunchy, bald, several leaned on canes as they limped through the hot, dusty town. Their order of march was the most unmilitary display I had ever seen; no cadence, no smart, stiff-backed quick-stepping Marines.

“But one wondered who they were. Were they carpenters, plumbers, doctors, cabdrivers, schoolteachers? Probably they were all of these and none of these, because they were average American men who had served their country, survived in time of terrible war and returned. . . There was scarcely a dry eye on that street. . . .”

Was it that long ago?

In the early 1940s James R. Pratley of Rancho Bernardo drove a jeep as a forest ranger in Angeles National Forest. “We used anything that would run with any degree of reliability and on that score, they were unbeatable. . . . Comfortable they were not, and if the weather was bad, rain or snow, you knew you were in for a very miserable day. (But) six men, stakes, transit and level, together with whatever else was needed on the job would all fit in one jeep. . . .”

Thomas D. Cullen of San Pedro says I must have been joking when I said American generals rode in jeeps but German generals rode in Mercedes phaetons. He says German generals would more likely have visited the front in a Kubelwagon (about the same size as a jeep but with doors) or a Horch, a larger, boxy six-seater that was “equivalent to what we used to call a command car.” He compares the Kubelwagon with the Volkswagen convertible.

Cullen and I must not have seen the same World War II movies.

Ed Kysar of Reseda and A. G. Jungers both insist that the jeep was first and properly called a Peep. If so, that name was history when I joined the armed forces. Webster’s New World Dictionary says jeep is an abbreviation for G.P.--General Purpose Car. Peep is “a brief, hasty look. . . .”

By the way, Jeep is a trademark for the popular civilian Jeep, which is slightly larger and more comfortable than the military jeep, and is still manufactured by Jeep Eagle, a division of Chrysler Motors Corp.