WWII Era Jeep: Riding in a piece of history

John Currie (driving) and his WWII Club folks riding in a 4th of July parade in his Willys Jeep

Friday and Saturday I helped out my friend John with re-architecting his computing gear. He took delivery of a new 30″ display, needed to migrate all his old Powermac tower stuff to his new Mac, and get his wireless network to be perfect. What I thought would be a couple of hours of tech assistance turned into six hours over two days.

As I left Saturday morning (satisfied as hell everything was working!) and as he effusively thanked me, I casually mentioned to John that I hadn’t told him about my “payment for services rendered.” Looking a bit taken aback, I mentioned that all I wanted was a ride in his newly acquired and restored World War II era jeep. Looking relieved he said, “It’s a beautiful day so why don’t we go now?”

Though his 30 caliber machine gun wasn’t mounted and, in fact, has been neutered and won’t fire (something about “laws” against working military ordinance was mentioned) we flipped down the windshield and took it out for a ride.

Damn…we talk about the sacrifices the Greatest Generation made and they deserve our thanks, recognition and undying gratitude for sure, but I never imagined that just riding around in one of these vehicles was a huge sacrifice in and of itself!

The seats were uncomfortable, there wasn’t any leg room, it was bouncy as all get out, it seemed pretty unsafe on 30mph suburban roads and yet I’ve always wanted to ride in one (or drive it actually). It’s amazing how far we’ve come militarily what with helicopters, GPS, satellites, night vision and more and yet our brave young men and women are today dying in thinly armored Humvees not much more robust than this nearly 70 year old vehicle.

At least those driving around in this open and amazingly unsafe jeep in the early 1940’s knew that the future of the world was at stake and they were fighting fascism, to protect our homeland and that their leadership was, in fact, able to locate their posteriors with both hands.