By Gregory Clark, June 25, 1955.
Mr. Joe Greaves is a respected member of the newspaper printing trade in Port Arthur. But 12 years ago, he was Pte. Joe Greaves.
And one day the sergeant-major said to him:
“What’s your line?”
“Driver,” offered Joe. “Jeeps, trucks, lorries.”
“Civil life?” checked the S.M.
“Printer,” said Joe. “Newspaper.”
“Ha!” said the S.M.
And that is how Joe was instructed to report himself forthwith to the Public Relations unit of the First Canadian Division, which was fighting in Italy.
And that is how Joe found himself driving a jeep with me in the back seat.
Now, I am going to make this story as respectful of myself as I can. After all, a man at my age owes himself a little consideration. Sitting there in the back seat of the jeep, I was 51 years old, which is pretty creaky in war time, even for a war correspondent. To keep up with kids of 19 or 23, with colonels only 25 years of age, and brigadiers 29, you have got to be nimble.
Nimble in the wits, if not in the joints. To begin with, I had one advantage: I had been an army officer in the previous war, and had several medal ribbons brightening up my ill-fitting battle dress. I used to carry my left chest a little forward of my right chest when dealing with these young strangers. They had no ribbons yet.
And further to confuse them, I had another heritage from the first war. In that famous war, I had been scared right up to the edge of my steel helmet, with the result that, while my hair under the helmet stayed brown, my side hair turned white. And by growing these white sideburns luxuriantly, I found I could create a sort of Foxy Grandpa1 image that puzzled the young soldiers sorely. Until they saw my green-and-gold “War Correspondent” insignia on my shoulders, they might suppose I was the Episcopal Bishop of Ohio, or perhaps the general’s uncle. Many a sentry, seeing me approach, would get the spasms trying to decide whether to give me a mere butt salute, a present arms, or to turn out the guard. Nothing like a good bunch of white sidewhiskers in war time.
Pte. Joe Greaves, on first seeing me sitting plump in the back seat of the jeep he was destined to drive for many a thousand mile in the Italian mountains, was duly impressed and confused. To add to his confusion, he told me afterwards, I reminded him of his Grandpa.
Joe was three things above all: a skilled and daring driver, a joyous laugher, and a most gentle heart.
But he hadn’t driven me more than 10 miles before he made the horrifying discovery that he had with him perhaps the worst back-seat driver in the world.
Capt. Gordon Hutton, M.C., of Vancouver, who was our conducting officer, and sat in the front seat of the jeep beside Joe, put it into the official records that he had, in his previous experience, encountered some 200 back-seat drivers, and that I was as bad as all the 200 put together.
It may be so. But, as I told them over and over, after all, God made me. Joe loved driving, and a jeep, to a young soldier, was something like a sports car. He didn’t own it. He didn’t have to pay for its upkeep. Boy!
And here were the mountain roads of Italy, hairpin turns, obstacles, vast abysses without rails to lend spice to every twist and turn…
But in the back seat, the champion back-seat driver of the world, a feeble, cantankerous old gentleman who reminded him of his grandfather, and who roused in Joe’s gentle and respectful nature every sentiment of consideration…
It was a cruel situation. And with lively interest, I set myself to watch it work itself out.
At every burst of speed down a mountain road, I bellowed. At every turn, I shouted caution. If we raced too close into the dust cloud of a 10-ton truck’s tail, I howled. Uphill, I demanded the jeep’s double-low gear. Downhill, I pleaded.
Joe’s happy laughter died. In a few days, his weight began to fall. In the mornings, he came slowly to his job. In the evenings, when he let me out at my quarters, he raced away in flying cinders. Captain Hutton watched us out of the corner of his eye.
High in the sad, agonized mountains of Molise, where surely no poet ever sang, we were hop-skip-and-jeeping over disaster-riven mountain roads and I was practically popping, when there suddenly, on a jagged turn, appeared before us the smoking wreckage of a lorry that had struck a ratchet mine a little while before. It was strewn all over the narrow road and up the steep mountainside.
Joe Greaves jammed the brakes and we crept up on the gruesome spectacle.
Joe locked the hand brake, bailed out. Up the steep bank he scrambled and started wrestling in the wreckage.
Down he bounded, bearing in his hands the steering wheel of the lorry and a broken bit of its column. He hoisted them over the side of the jeep into my lap.
“There!” he cried triumphantly. “Now you can drive too!”
Editor’s Note: This story appeared in Greg’s Choice (1961) and A Bar’l of Apples (1971).
- This is in reference to Foxy Grandpa, a comic strip that started in 1900 and was a bout an old guy who was just as mischievous as the kids in the comics at the time. “Foxy” at the time meant cunning or crafty, and not the more modern slang definition of attractive. ↩︎