ROLE OF HARD WORKING JEEPS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 7, Issue 55, 10 March 1944, Page 3

ROLE OF HARD WORKING JEEPS

The effect of the jeep on war, tlie enemy, find the American people is a subject Avhich .should give the philosophers a field day at .some Jutnre date.

The influence of the jeep cannot be ignored. K\'en the demobilisation of a parked jeep has developed into a line art. In the Mediterranean war theatre there are many methods: you can remove the rotor on the distributor, or one of the distributor wires; you can lock the wheel with a chain; you can disengage one ol the wires and Mien padlock the hood ,so no one can replace it. Some soldiers use. all these methods and -they still lose jeeps, states an American \v a r co rrespo nden t. In Tunis one night, several officers went into a French restaurant to eat. Captain Iludy C. Koller, of: San Francisco, group navigator for a living squadron outfit, chained the jeep's "wheel: Lieut. "Waller F(Snuffy) Simmons, of Tarboro, N.C., removed the rotor; Major Norman E. Annich, of HarrLsburg, Pa., padlocked the hood. Tin addition the jeep -was parked right in front ol the restaurant door. An hour later it was gone. Once you get a jeep, in addition to • the elemental problem of just keeping it, there <ire the problems of keeping it in condition. The case of a jeep named Katy demonstrates the point. A few weeks, ago a bunch of the boys were in a Naples hall when the air-raid sirens blew. A bomb lit outside and blew in the door. But Katy, parked outside, really caught it. One of its windshields was blown in, it instrument panel av;is knocked out. and its motor sustained severe internal injuries. It spent thie.e days in the ordnance shop getting its race lifted and its innards repaired. ' Someone took Katy up I rout one day. It only got charred up by some bomb fragments but somehow its motor never has seemed the same since. But Corporal llarry Cowe. of Seattle, Wash., who drives Katy here and thefie, belongs to the anti-jiccp school. He just got a letter from a. friend back, home who says everybody plans to buy a jeep alter the Avar. "Nobody who ever rode in one will,'" says llarry, bitterly.

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