This October 14, 1945, article by Earl Albert Selle (more on him below) in the Honolulu Advertiser shared a few stories about the dangers faced by jeep drivers in the Pacific Theater. Brown University has a collection of Earl Selle’s correspondence, articles, photos, and other materials. The collection also contains materials from William Henry Donald, about who Selle wrote a book called “Donald in China” in 1948 (which sounds like an interesting book, also available here). There are pics of the book on Etsy.
Earl Albert Selle, was born around 1887 in Seattle. His early life was full of adventure. During WWII he went blind, as was probably blind when he wrote the above column. But, that didn’t stop him from being adventurous. It is claimed he made news in 1961 when he wrote about becoming an aviator and flying a plan with the help of a seeing-eye-pilot. You can learn more about Earl in this obituary:
Interesting article. I just now happened to be working my way through the history of my dad’s infantry regiment in the ETO where he was one of his companies Jeep drivers (which is, I guess, where I caught Jeep fever). Through his pictures and the few stories he told about it I’ve gotten a much better picture of exactly what those guys did in a very challenging environment. In most situations, it seems, the front line guys in the foxhole or observation positions depended on the Jeep drivers to get them ammo, blankets, chow and anything else they needed to keep them supplied. I remember asking dad one night how you could drive at top speed down country roads at night with no lights and he replied,”you had to. If the Germans could see you or hear where you were the shells would be on the way”. He had a very healthy respect for the German 88’s and machine guns. I have pictures of Jeeps with amazing loads. He loved those Jeeps, I guess that’s why I do too.
Hi Tom,
Thanks for the stories! If you ever get around to scanning/taking photos of your Dad’s jeep pictures, we loved to see them! Feel free to email at d@deilers.com with any additional info.
– Dave