In the mechanical end of our African war three American vehicles stood out above all the others.  They were the jeep, the GMC two-and-a-half-ton truck, and the Douglas DC-3 cargo plane.

The DC-3, known in the army as the C-47, is the workingest airplane in existence, I suppose.  It lifted incredible loads, and took terrific beatings from rough fields, hard handling, and overuse.  Almost any pilot would tell you it was the best airplane ever built.

The GMC truck did the same thing in its field.  It hauled big loads, it was easy to drive and easy-riding, and the truck drivers could do practically anything with it up to an outside loop.  It seldom got stuck, and it it did it could winch itself out.  The punishment it took was staggering.

And the jeep—good Lord, I don’t think we could have won the campaign without the jeep.  It did everything, went everywhere, was as faithful as a dog, as strong as a mule, and as agile as a goat.  It consistently carried twice what it was designed for, and still kept going.  I didn’t think it even rode so badly after I got used to it.  I drove jeeps thousands of miles, and if I had been called upon to suggest changes for a new model I could have thought of only one or two little things.  One was the handbrake.  It was perfectly useless—it wouldn’t hold at all.  They should have designed one that worked or else saved metal by having none at all.

And in the field of acoustics, I wish they could somehow have fixed the jeep so that at certain speeds the singing of those heavy tires hadn’t sounded exactly like an approaching airplane.  That little sound effect caused me to jump out of my skin more than once.  But except for those two trivial items the jeep was a divine instrument of wartime locomotion.