By Leslie Kelly
He calls it “olive drab fever.”
It’s that love of Army green, especially on vehicles and Vern Christopher never gets tired of it.
“No, no,” he said. “It gets in your blood.”
Christopher, a resident of Crosby, a small bend in the road southwest of Seabeck , is an Army veteran and served in Korea. His family settled in Crosby in 1924 when it was called Camp Union.
“My dad came here to be a logger and my mother was the camp cook,” Christopher said. “When the camp closed down, the family just stayed here.”
Vern was born in 1941, the youngest of five children.
“We all had nicknames,” he said. “Buckshot, BB Shot, Birdshot, Slingshot, and when I came along they called me Cannon Ball. I’m not sure why.”
Growing up, Vern loved to play with trucks. He was always fascinated by automobile mechanics and tinkered with it as a high school kid. When he graduated from Central Kitsap High School in 1959, he was pretty sure he’d end up being a mechanic, but then a friend suggested he go in the Army.
“He talked me into signing up with him,” Christopher said. “I was in three years. He lasted a week.”
But during those three years, he gained much, including a career as a truck driver, and a wife, Soo, to whom he’s been married 50 years.
His first assignment was to Fort Carson, Colorado, and then to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. There he learned to drive a truck, a big olive green Army truck. He was soon sent to Korea for 16 months.
In Korea he drove heavy equipment and delivered supplies. A friend introduced him to Soo, who was a seamstress in a tailoring shop. Years before, she had fled her home on foot near the North and South Korea border, walking south to be safe from the Communists were expected to move south.
They fell in love and when Christopher left Korea with nine months left to serve in the Army, he tried to bring her with him.
“It would take six to eight months to process the paperwork for us to get married in Korea,” he said. “There wasn’t enough time.”
So he returned to Fort Bliss, Texas, and he married Soo by proxy, so that she could come to the United States. But immigration wouldn’t recognize the marriage. The only thing left to do was to return to Korea and get her. If he did that, immigration would acknowledge the marriage.
“I got the money together and flew there,” he said. “I had the $25 I needed to pay for her visa, but I was robbed. I tried the U.S. Embassy and they said they could get me home, but they couldn’t give me money.
“I tried to get on the base where I’d be able to borrow some money from someone, but I couldn’t get through security. The Gulf of Tonkin had happened and security was beefed up.”
His visa to be in Korea was only good for two weeks. He had his mother mail him money, but it didn’t get there in time and he had to leave Soo there again.
Once home, he got the money together and sent for her. She arrived and they made their home in Kitsap County. Christopher worked driving a truck cross-county using the skills he learned in the Army. He worked at Bangor for about three years as a truck driver and then he bought a logging truck and went to work for himself.
For 20 years he hauled logs for Pulp and Talbot, and for private people.
“That’s how I got into military equipment,” Christopher said. “After Korean, I never thought I’d want to see an Army truck again. But I found and old Army six-by-six, just like the one I drove in Korea. I thought it would be perfect with that log loader on it. But I never did that.”
Instead, he decided to restore the cargo truck. And once he had it restored, it was such a good job that when he drove it, people would say “How come the Army lets you use that truck to pull your logs?” he said.
Soon, more military vehicles made their way to him.
“Someone I knew saw an Army Jeep for sale and told me about it,” he said. ‘They said ‘You got the truck. Now you need the Jeep.’”
Then it was a 1941 Dodge Army ambulance — just like the one used in the television show M.A.S.H.
“My daughter saw it for sale down by Wildcat Lake,” he said. “There were only a few thousand of them. They’re kind of rare and not many are left out there.”
He bought it and restored it.
And then it was 1941 Dodge Command vehicle.
“I always wanted one of them,” he said. “So I could drive military officials in the parades.”
Currently he owns nine military vehicles, including a “Weasel,” a World War II track vehicle made to run in snow. There’s still a couple of Jeeps in various states of repair in his yard. He also restores Model-Ts and tractors.
He does all the restoration himself, from mechanical repairs to painting. He searches the Internet for parts, and goes to swap meets looking for the things he needs.
He drives his military vehicles in many local parades, including Armed Forces Day in Bremerton and Whaling Days in Silverdale and he shows them at community events such as Blackberry Days.
He’s even been known to give neighborhood kids rides on the Weasel when it snows.
His M.A.S.H. ambulance was driven by Dennis Quaid in “Come see the Paradise,” a movie filmed in Oregon about the Japanese interment camps.
“I drove it down there and taught him (Quaid) how to drive it,” Christopher said. “They treated us great, fed us and put us in a hotel.”
Just how much he’s invested in his military vehicles, Christopher hasn’t kept track. He’s not really even sure how much his restored vehicles are worth.
“More than when I got them,” he joked. “Because when I got them, they were just a pile of junk.”
He’s a member of the West Sound Military Vehicles Collector’s Club which has about 25 members.
As for the lessons learned in the Army, the most important, he said, was responsibility.
“They taught me to be responsible. It was a good experience,” he said, “one that all young people should have. I’ve seen a lot of places that I otherwise would never have seen. And I have a wonderful wife that without the Army, I would have never met.”