The Road to Montepulciano by Garrick Jones

Author:Garrick Jones [Jones, Garrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FICTION: LGBT / Gay; Mystery & Detective / Historical; Thrillers / Crime; Mystery & Detective / Private Investigators.
Publisher: Tellwell Talent
Published: 2023-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

“Back in ‘44, one of our teams of six threw one of these babies together, straight out of the crate, in just under ten minutes,” Quartermaster Jackson Harbord said proudly, patting the side of the large wooden box. As it said, stencilled on the side, it was twelve feet long, four and a half feet tall, and five foot five inches wide, in US measurements.

I couldn’t believe an entire Jeep was packed into such a compact space. “All this for fifteen dollars?” I asked.

“Back home they’re on sale, straight off the wharf in San Francisco for two hundred and forty-eight, but by my reckoning there are about three hundred still in boxes all over Italy, not to mention used Jeeps in storage yards, their tyres flat, batteries run down, sitting out in the open since 1946. We have orders that everything is to be sold, including motor vehicles.”

Harbord had told me over the telephone that he could even sell me a tank for “fifty bucks” if I wanted one.

I’d been told that eventually all the hardware in the surplus store was designated to be shipped back to the USA if it didn’t sell, but Randy had scoffed at the idea, saying that when Uncle Sam eventually got around to thinking about doing something, all this World War Two equipment would be so out of date it wouldn’t be worth the time or the trouble even to ship it home for scrap.

“So, how long will it take the four of us?” I asked. Harbord had three mechanics on base, mainly used to upkeep current service vehicles.

“Four?”

“I’ll give you a hand,” I said.

“With you, probably an hour longer than the time it’d take my men.”

“Certified motor mechanic, 1942, at your service, sergeant,” I said.

The quartermaster wasn’t the only one who looked surprised. Randy cocked his head at me and smiled.

“Tell you what, Mr O’Reilly, if you can help my men throw two of these babies together, you can have this one for ten bucks and I’ll throw in the official service manual and a mechanics’ field service kit. You’ll never get the right tools here. Jeeps are built using US measure­ments. If you needed something to tighten a nut or a bolt, you’d have to come back to me to get it. But with the kit you should be able to fix nearly anything that might go wrong.”

I held out my hand and we shook.

*****

“Is there no end to your talents?” Randy asked me later that night over dinner while we were discussing the deal of the century. “Is there anything else you’ve got hidden up your sleeve I should know about?”

The morning had been wonderful. Like carpentry, my painting and my writing, I loved anything mechanical. The Department of Defence had done us lads a favour when they’d trained us before we went off to war. The two Jeeps—assembling both simultaneously by following the direction booklet—had been constructed within an hour. I’d shaken my head in disbelief, but whoever had

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