The month of May brings us many things, spring and warmer temperatures, renewed dreams and hopes of restoring and driving our jeeps and of course, Memorial Day. Memorial Day began after the Civil War as a means of remembering and honoring our fallen war heros. It was first officially recognized in 1873, though no one knows where it was first begun. It was probably celebrated in many places simultaneously as a natural human need to grieve our war dead.
So in honor of Memorial Day, the May page for the 2011 calendar has three images of GIs utilizing the venerable MB in the field.
The MB was a natural for the Pacific campaign and in the tropical environment mud and the harsh environment was a daily fact of life. While the jeep was up for any sort of obstacle, mud could sometimes momentarily slow it down as the photo below shows.
But not even a river crossing could stop the jeep for long as it was designed to be able to ford a river. The above photo from an original transparency shows an MB fording a river crossing by means of wrapping it in tarpaulin and creating enough buoyancy that it could actually float. A bit more info on the technique can be found here from the website 42FordGPW.
You can still buy the 2011 This-Old-Jeep.com calendar from our online store hosted by Zazzle, where you can find a large selection of jeep history related gifts.
You can view the rest of the calendar pages here and the full-sized individual images here.
Tune in next week and we’ll have more of the best of the rarely seen photos, ads, brochures, illustrations and history of the mighty jeep!
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