“Little Bo
Peep has Lost her Jeep….”
Despite inevitable hang-ups and
bottlenecks, the overall record of WWII industrial history suggests that
automobile manufacturers and their military consumers created an institutional
matrix that resulted in innovation and production. The outstanding example of
this process was the Jeep. In June 1940, the army’s Ordinance Technical
Committee called for a “low-silhouette scout car.”22 The army
invited 135 manufacturers to develop a prototype, but due to short deadlines,
only two companies responded – American Bantam and Willys-Overland. The Chief
Engineer and Vice-President of Willys-Overland, Delamor Roos, had championed
the light automobile for years.23 Bantam developed the original
prototype, and Willys-Overland added a number of improvements. The
Willys-Overland design was accepted, and Ford agreed to mass-produce the Jeep.
In total, 660,000 Jeeps were constructed for the war effort.24 The
Jeep came to symbolize mechanized total war. It was unlike any other
automobile. Herbert R. Rifkin noted that beyond performance, “In appearance,
too, the jeep was radically different.”25 He wrote, “Soon well-known
to every school-boy on the street were its squat, rectangular, utilitarian
shape and its coat of olive-drab, lusterless enamel that had been develop
shortly before, its low silhouette; the flat fenders on each of which an
additional man could be carried if necessary; the heavy brushguard [sic]
protecting the front; the folding windshield and detachable folding top or
canopy, the pintle [sic] and towing hooks; the heavy duty mud-and-snow tread
tires, and the front and rear blackout lights.”26
Beyond the Jeep’s military
significance are several less notable social and cultural influences. The
outpourings lavished on the Jeep resulted in this machine becoming an indelible
part of war-time culture. In Hail to the
Jeep, A. Wade Wells wrote, “The
Jeep possesses the American flair for getting around.”27 During
the war, like many other mass-produced machines, the Jeep was perceived as a
liberator. After entering Paris, the Allies paraded along the Champs Elysees in
Jeeps four abreast. In rural Sicily, the Jeep liberated a rural town from the
malfunctions of water power. At the mill, G.I.s carried a Jeep up a flight of
stairs and connected the motor to a failed olive crushing machine, and saved
88,000 pounds of olive oil. The Jeep was heralded as “a top flight ambassador
of good will.”28 Soldiers
individualized their Jeeps and became attached to them. One author speculated,
“The practice of naming vehicles, especially if the solder had a free choice of
names, was a great factor in developing this personal attachment.”29
Jeeps were named after women (Alice, Donna, Aloha Betty); terms of
endearment (Angel Face, Babe, Honey); men (Jack, Joe, Tony’s Tank); virtues (Duty, Honesty, Vigilant);
cartoon characters (Bambi,
Batman, Wizard of Oz); music (Back Beat Boogie, Jumping Jive, Sinatra); functions (Surge-on, Buckets o’ Bolts,
Low Gear); military terms (Attack, Cannonball, Salute); war
locations (Argonne, Berlin Bound, Geneva); and obscenities (Cherry,
Hot, Pussy).30
During the war, the Jeep became an
icon of American technology, representing the superiority of mass production
techniques and a centerpiece of poems, songs, movies, and books. The Andrews Sisters sang, “Six Jerks in a
Jeep” in the 1942 film Private
Buckaroo. In 1942, Jerry Bowne and
Frank De Val wrote, “Little Bo Peep Has Lost her Jeep.”
In 1944, children’s book writer
Henderson Le Grand penned Augustus Drives
a Jeep. The plot of the novel centered on Augustus’ discovery of his
neighbor’s Jeep and the subsequent adventure that ensued. To the awed schoolboy
Augustus, the Jeep was a conveyance of adventure. Augustus drove the Jeep off
road, delivered a sick man to a hospital, and even used the Jeep to replace an
obsolete mule in the plowing of a field. The reader wonders whether Augustus or
the Jeep is in control: “The jeep adjusted itself to its uncertain driver and
rolled easily over the bumps and hollows of the field with a motion like a
small boat in a heavy sea.”31 In 1944, actress Carole Landis
published Four Jills in a Jeep; a
memoir of her 5-month tour of Europe as a member of the Hollywood Victory
Committee.32 With actresses Martha Raye, Mitzi Mayfair, and Kay
Francis, Landis moved about the front in a Jeep and entertained troops.
In
1944 artilleryman and newspaper correspondent Fairfax Downey wrote Jezebel
the Jeep, a tribute to the
Jeeps he drove in the war. Even in the process of mass production, Jezebel was
born an individual:
The chief inspector himself took
Jezebel off the line. He slapped her on the steering wheel button, and she
squawked lustily. He turned her lights on and she wink at him. He twisted on
her ignition, and she warmed to him; in fact, she fairly purred at him the
second he touch the self-starter. There was nothing backward about Jezebel but
her reverse gear.33
Jezebel lavished her affection upon
a Johnny, an artillery officer. She saved his life in the Tunisian campaign and
helped him invade Sicily. After the war, Jezebel and Johnny went on hunting and
fishing trips, and she served him as the ultimate peacetime utility. Downey
concluded that Jezebel, the machine, was as much a wartime survivor and veteran
as Johnny, the human being.
To sum things up, Smithsonian writer
Doug Stewart noted, “The jeep became the personification of Yankee ingenuity
and cocky, can-do determination.”34 After the war, the Jeep became
an important utility vehicle for American farmers, and later, with a return to
smaller cars from large gas-guzzlers, a preferred automobile of American
consumers.
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