His name was Eugene Calvert and was born in 1922 in Kansas City, Missouri. He jumped a freight train to western Oklahoma to live with is uncle at age 14 having already learned how to drive my grandparents car. My grandmother was the overbearing religious type and he had enough of her. After a few years he rode the rails again to Denver where he became a driver for a wealthy family. I found him listed as a household servant in a pre-war census. He had made his way to Los Angeles in time for Pearl Harbor where he promptly joined the Merchant Marines. He and tall ships didn't get along and it wasn't long before he made his way to the US Army where he found a better match. Because he had driving skills and was a bit older than the other recruits (he was 20!) he was given the job of driving a jeep for one of the officers in the unit. They shipped out from North Carolina to North Africa in 1943 arriving just after the German surrender there. One of his first assignments was guarding what remained of the Afrika Corp prisoners corralled in the desert. they were given tommy guns and no ammo...so as not to accidentally shoot a prisoner and start a riot! After that was the landing at Salerno where he went ashore at the Greek ruin of Paestum on day two having spent day one unloading a liberty ship and watching another ship next to his explode after taking a direct hit from a Stuka. He stayed in Italy with the 5th army in an artillery unit until the end of the fighting. In August 1945 he was on a plane headed home for a 30 day leave then off to the invasion of Japan. During this trip the first atomic bomb was dropped on Japan and the war was soon over.
He stayed in the army until 1953 serving as a drill instructor at Fort Riley Kansas and running a ROTC unit in Des Moines Iowa. As fate would have it, he met my mother who came into a recruiting office in Ottumwa Iowa to join the navy at the outset of the Korean war. She was 18 and dad was 28 and already a Master Sargent. Dad had other ideas and they were married 45 years. He passed away at the age of 88 in 2010. Because dad actually loved being in the Army and often spoke of the joys of driving jeeps and deuces during the war (he loved driving) In 2011 I purchased my 1944 MB and named it Gene. It has been a reliable daily driver in coastal Georgia for 10 years and is now apart for restoration and preservation. My jeep served in the US Navy at the New York Naval shipyard in Brooklyn also until 1953.
Here's to Gene and his Jeep and my new passion to bring it back to its former glory (with alot of help from you guys!!)
We think this might have been at Fort Bragg before he shipped out
Based on his rank I think this is post war circa 1946 or 47
My ex Navy 1944 MB taken June 2019 for its 75th birthday on Tybee Island GA by National Geographic photographer Dan Winters
