The CO's Jeep
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While at Long Binh I had one on my jeeps get wrecked really bad on the right front. I knew that I couldn’t get a replacement for it so I went to PDO and found one that was wrecked on the other side and cut out the piece I needed to repair my jeep. The Squadron Commander just happened to come through the motor park when I was cutting the damaged part from the wrecked jeep. He looked at me and said: “Hutch, do you know what you are doing?” I told him that I thought so but I knew the Army had all the manuals that I could possibly need if I got lost and that I was an avid reader. He just shook his head as he was walking off and said that he would be checking back to see how I was coming along with the repair.
I finished the repair and I put some Ford Falcon bucket seats in and floor mats. The gear stick I swapped out with a Heuy cyclic stick and painted the whole thing a glossy black olive drab mix. I then drove over to the troop headquarters and told the commander that the jeep was his. Well to make a long story shorter, the next time he went to squadron headquarters the Colonel took his jeep from him and told him that there was no way that he could have a better looking jeep than him.
The next time the colonel came through he wanted to see what had happen to the jeep that I had torn apart in the motor park. When I told him that he was riding in it he didn’t believe me until I showed him where I had welded it together and sanded the welds before the paint job. He was really amazed. I didn’t find this out until I was retired out of the army, but the next time he went to the PX Viet Nam Headquarters a two star general made him swap jeeps with him. I found that out from my old commander on a phone call.