Jeep Show: A Trouper at the Battle of the Bulge

Jeep ShowA Trouper at the Battle of the Bulge

Despite a fatherhood deferment, thirty-year-old dance instructor Jim Tanzer enlists in the Army in 1943. Stella, his wife and partner in their dance act, regrets his choice.

Jim goes for paratrooper, but gets assigned to the Morale Corps because of his show business background. He is classified MOS 442: Entertainment Specialist.

Private Jim Tanzer is shipped to the European Theater of Operations and assigned to Jeep shows: three enlisted entertainers are driven to the front lines, where they put on small variety shows for combat infantry. Private Mickey Rooney leads Jim’s squad.

Caught in the Battle of the Bulge, Jim retreats to Bastogne, where he is attached to Team SNAFU, a hastily-organized unit composed of survivors from overrun infantry companies, dismounted tankers and artillerymen, as well as clerks, bakers, mechanics and other rear-echelon soldiers pressed into combat to support the 101st Airborne Division.

Deftly interweaving Jim’s story with historical events, O’Connor provides a compelling picture of a combat soldier’s life in the ETO. Jeep Show also illuminates the Army’s comprehensive efforts to improve the moral of its citizen-soldiers, and other little-known aspects of the U.S. war effort.

O’Connor salts the story with fascinating snapshots of show business life in pre-war America. For fans of WW2 non-fiction and fiction, including Band of Brothers, Saving Private Ryan, Ken Burns’ The War, The Thin Red Line, With the Old Breed, The Red Badge of Courage, and Catch 22.