He Shot My Jeep

In the 70's, the National Guard hired a lot of unit members to recruit.  My unit In Horton, KS was very fortunate to have a great soldier available to Recruit.  The unfortunate thing was the lack of support the recruiters have today.  To provide transportation, the recruiter used the Battery Commander's Jeep.  In some ways, I'm sure the recruits liked to travel in the jeep but it did create some strange events.  This is one of them.

One Friday evening, I stopped by the Armory to take my jeep to Fort Riley.  The unit XO would bring the guns and the remainder of the battery later.  I drove early to meet with the Battalion Commander and his staff.   As luck would have it, it was raining.

My first clue there was something wrong was a drip of water that fell on my knee.  Drip after drip until my knee was fairly wet.  Having been in Vietnam during the Monsoon season, I was not unduly alarmed by a little water, but it was an unusual pace to have a leak. It was dark and I could not see the source of the leak so I just made a mental note to check it the next day in the daylight. Yep, right there where I expected, there was a patch in the canvas top on the jeep.  There was also a place in the metal frame over the windshield that looked like a patch had been welded in. 

Now my curiosity was at a peak.  I found the Unit Administrator and man did he not want to tell me what had happened.  With a promise to not seek punishment for the offender, he finally told me the story.  My unit recruiter was also a hunter and as he traveled up and down the dirt roads in North East Kansas he keep his eyes open for coyotes. 

As luck would have it, one day my recruiter was driving down the road and there on the far horizon was a coyote.  He stopped and threw his gun on the canvas roof and taking aim with the scope he shot that coyote.  The coyote just ran off and my recruiter was just surprised that he missed.  When he got back in the jeep, he realized his mistake.  The rifle being a couple of inches lower than his scope, he had a great view of the coyote but.... He shot my jeep.  We had a lot of good laughs over that.

MUD