The Autobiography of a 'Jeep'

When he debarked on a Normandy beach a few days after the D-Day landings, Andy Rooney was a correspondent and, as such, was issued a Jeep, an ungainly but rugged four-wheeled convertible. He used the vehicle through the European Theater for most of the rest of the war. At the end, he was transferred to the China-Burma-India Theater where nothing of import was happening. Since he need to leave the jeep behind, he simply turned it over to a fellow correspondent.

Two years after the war's end, Rooney received a letter from the authorities. He was required to account for the whereabouts of the Jeep, Serial Number 012345x. He placed the letter in a neglected drawer of his desk and it may still be there.

Rooney is no longer with us and neither is the original Jeep, made for the Armed Forces by the Willy Company. It was ubiquitous. If there were men and women in uniform around, there were also Jeeps. In the post-war years the original design was replaced by a somewhat bigger one. "Improvement" always means "bigger." This short film uses the first-person narrative (by Pat O'Brien) to describe the Jeep's development and capabilities. No mention of the prevailing belief that it rolled over on top of the occupants too easily. It's kind of entertaining to see these boxy things, so unlike any previous or existing automobiles, schlepping cannons and trailers and bouncing up and down, taking flight sometimes, swimming across rivers, being packed into cargo airplanes.

One kind of misses that robust simplicity. Now we're using SUVs too big to fit into the garage because of the 20 mm. cannons on top.