Excerpt from Jeep Show: A Trouper at the Battle of the Bulge

by Robert B. O’Connor

HOSINGEN, LUXEMBOURG,
DECEMBER 15, 1944

15 December 1944
For Brig. General Balmer
s/A.E. Baker
Lt. Col., AGD

Jeep Shows number one to six were attached to VIII Corps Morale Corps Officer on 5 December 1944. Every effort was made to book the teams with the combat troops, close to the front. The benefit to morale projected by the hard work of these performers in putting on as many as eleven shows in one day, in places formerly thought unapproachable with entertainment, has made their outstanding performance of duty exceptionally valuable to this command.

The headlights of the Willys MB Jeep light up the slate barn in front of sixty GIs sitting on raincoats or cardboard. A handful of sergeants and officers are on their feet in the back. A squad just returning from patrol looks around for cover. All but one of these men and boys will be killed or captured in the next three days.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Private Jim Tanzer says into a T-30 microphone connected to the Jeep’s battery. Empty B-ration cans protrude from the headlight sockets. Exhaust streams thick and white in the cold Ardennes night.

“Company K,” Jim continues, “3rd Battalion, 110th Regiment, 28th Division, 13th Corps, 15th Army, 12th Army Group…” He pauses for a beat. “Is proud to present the main event of the evening.” Two beats. “A wrestling match, for the catchweight championship of the European Theatre of Operations.”

Private Tanzer wears a khaki-colored sweatshirt adorned with a hand-drawn bow-tie, olive drab wool trousers and brown service boots. He looks ridiculous. The desired effect.

“In this corner!” Jim unfolds his right arm palm up towards stage right. “Man Mountain McGillicuddy! A-weighing two tons, four ounces.” He turns his eyes right. Private Wes Novak bounds in from stage left and hits his mark, elbows up, chest out. He wears OD wool three-button long johns and socks. He is shirtless, despite the cold. A few chuckles float out of the audience.

“Introducing the title holder!” Jim continues. “The Mosquito Menace! A-weighing four ounces, two tons.” Jim unfolds his left arm, palm up, towards stage left. He turns his eyes left. The short man struts in from stage right. There is an intake of breath in the audience, a widening of eyes, and involuntary smiles of recognition. It’s Private Mickey Rooney of Hollywood, California.

Mickey’s costume is a sleeveless OD undershirt and boxer shorts cinched at the waist by a khaki pistol belt. His auburn hair is piled three inches above the top of his round head. He mugs furiously, balling and unballing his fists. There is whistling, cheering and laughter.

“All right, boys, I want no fair wrestling in this match,” Jim says. Mickey and Wes pivot to face each other. “And may the worst man win.”

Jim claps them both on the back. They crash heads and stagger back three steps. Mickey does a half turn, revealing a large wrench tucked in his pistol belt. Wes pulls it out, places it on the ground stage left. This move allows Mickey to yank a crowbar out of Wes’s long johns and chuck it stage right.

Jim backs away, pulling the mic stand with him. The pantomime goes into slow motion. Every move is exaggerated. As the wrestlers lock fingers, Mickey’s face becomes a mask of agony. He escapes, pulls Wes down to the ground, and wraps his legs around Wes’s chest from behind, cheating out. Wes grimaces in theatrical pain. A few seconds later, Mickey pounds the ground in distress as Wes gnaws on his left shin. Jim pulls Wes away. From his knees, Mickey silently begs for mercy. Wes pulls him down and slowly pantomimes pounding his head on the ground. A kneeling Jim as referee follows the action with approving nods.

The wrestling burlesque—lifted from Boys Town, Mickey’s 1938 hit with Spencer Tracy—plays out for another minute and a half. Finally, Jim steps in just as Wes launches a slow-motion roundhouse right intended for Mickey. He hits Jim instead, who slowly crumples to the ground, unconscious. Mickey then drops Wes with a haymaker. While bowing to the audience, Mickey is struck by an errant foot as Wes collapses on top of Jim. Mickey reels and collapses on the pile.

Three beats. The performers jump up, acknowledging applause and cheers. They exit stage right.

On the same day as this performance in Hosingen, Luxembourg, Private Jim Tanzer was featured in Leeland Adair’s local interest column in the Huntington Herald Advertiser. Adair assured readers that Jimmy still had that old spark and Tabasco, reporting that he and his fellow performers in uniform—including former Hollywood movie star Mickey Rooney—were now traveling up and down the front line in Jeeps, entertaining GI audiences of all sizes.

Adair added that the Jeep show soldiers carry out their morale mission despite occasional German snipers and shelling. Embellishment, perhaps, but accurate about the risk of working so close to the front line. He closed by reporting that Jimmy’s wife Stella, Stella Sterling onstage, had just finished a month at the famous Stage Door Canteen in New York, and their four-year-old daughter Betty Jo is with Jimmy’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. W.T. Tanzer, of 14 Railroad Street.

Mickey is back, wearing OD wool trousers, garrison cap, Ike jacket, trench knife in his pistol belt. He lowers the mic. “Hey kids, let’s put on a show!” Cheers and applause.

“I want to thank you, K Company, for the welcome you gave us when we pulled into Hosingen. You were down on your knees. What a reception. What a tribute. What a crap game!” Laughter.

He continues: “Jeep shows are about as much like those rear-echelon USO shows” —boos— “as K-rations are to dinner at The Brown Derby. Not as hot, not as fancy, but much more portable!” Laughter.

“And what does the USO got that we don’t, except beautiful girls! Another example of combatmen getting the short end of the stick.” More boos.

Mickey turns to Wes, who has strapped on his accordion. “Hey, McGillicuddy. Is we is, or is we ain’t, gonna play ‘GI Jive’ tonight?”

“We is, Mickey!” Wes says, then squints a little as Mickey says “3/4 foxtrot” to him. They’ve always done it in 4/4-time, F major.

“We is g’wan do it jump blues style tonight,” Mickey says. “De Billboard’s number one jukebox record las’ summa. A l’il race music.” Some applause.

Wes begins to play. Mickey proceeds to sing “GI Jive” Louis Jordan-style. R&B. Mickey has done it swing-style, the way Johnny Mercer wrote it, in every show until now. Now Mickey sings behind the beat, growls and scats. Wes has played the song several hundred times. He gets there.

The audience nods and smiles. A couple of GIs begin to sway. Behind Mickey, Jim begins an eccentric dance step. The top half of his body is immobile while his legs impel him around the stage: 1-2-3-4 kick, jump across and 2-2-3, 1 kick back-tap. 1-2-3 tap, start over 1-2-3-4…

Mickey steps back from the mic. He mirrors Jim with steps more antic yet more precise. He returns to the mic and, with a wink at Wes, switches to 4/4-time for the last verse. Wes pretends to drop his accordion. Mickey ends with a few bars of “My Funny Valentine” in Judy Garland’s voice. What Mickey Rooney has can’t be called talent. He has something else entirely. Or it has him.

He steps back up to the mic. “Thank you. Dankeschoen. Gonna be some show in Germany in 1945, won’t it, boys?” he says, then grimaces slightly. The combatmen in the audience don’t clap. They’ve seen that show. It’s horrible.

Jeep Show – A Trouper at the Battle of the Bulge is available in printed, eBook, and audiobook formats at Amazon and Bookshop.org. Or ask your local bookseller to order you a copy.

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Robert B. O’Connor is the author of the WWII novel Jeep Show – A Trouper at the Battle of the Bulge and the non-fiction Gumptionade – A Booster for Your Self-Improvement Plan. Two radically different books about morale.

O’Connor lives and writes in Memphis, Tennessee. He is married to a physician-scientist and has three grown sons and a grandson.

O’Connor’s father, a WWII veteran, instilled in him a love of reading, his mother a love of sports. O’Connor read mostly biographies in his younger years. He went through a Winston Churchill phase, including cigars.

Now O’Connor reads mostly fiction. He read War and Peace twice (necessary because every character has at least three different Russian names). A Perfect Spy, Ragtime, Huckleberry Finn and Close Range: Wyoming Stories are also at the top of O’Connor’s fiction list. Recently, North Woods and This Is Happiness have delighted him.

O’Connor’s wrote his first book, Gumptionade, after life punched him in the mouth. As he was helped up off the mat, O’Connor read the Stoics, the Bible, undertook psychoanalysis, and started a small business. These and other experiences and influences revealed to him the power of gumption. Willpower alone is not enough.

Jeep Show began at Procter & Gamble, when O’Connor was told the Oxydol Circus legend. The promoter of that ill-fated circus, Jim Hetzer, inspired the protagonist of Jeep Show, Jim Tanzer.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.