Jacob Ruppert

Oct 10, 2017, 9:00 PM

At one time during WW2 our company was located in France amid a huge warehouse complex. Our repair unit was located in one of the warehouses and the remaining warehouses were occupied by the Quartermaster Corp. In those warehouses were all sots of items destined for troops at the front lines.

One of the warehouses contained the most beer I had ever seen at one location. It was stacked about 12 feet high, about 24 feet wide and 75 feet long. It looked as though it was an entire ship load. And the entire stack was Jacob Ruppert beer. Items, other than beer, had a higher priority for items going to the front so that beer stack just sat there, tempting any GI gazing upon that mountain of beer.

Temptation overcame the men in our company so they prepared a fake requisition to present tp the guard at the warehouse. One of our men drove a truck to the warehouse along with several strong-armed men, presented the requisition to the guard and loaded case after case of beer on the truck. The truck returned to our compound and all men were assembled to unload the beer and store it under his cot. Our CO and other company officers were aware of the beer requisition.

We had to be discrete, otherwise we would have been in deep trouble if we had an unexpected visitor from the IG's office. It would be very difficult to explain how we had so much beer in our possession when other troops had none. Our CO said it was time to have a party and get rid of most of the beer A team was sent our to explore the nearby villages to find a café that could host 160 men. The team found one that was able to host our group. They had a beer garden attached to the café so we now had our location settled. On the day of our party, beer was loaded on one of the trucks so they could get it to the café in time to chill the beer. Later in the day, everyone boarded our trucks and off we went to the nearby village. Local customers at the cafe were invited to join our party and anyone who came by was also invited to join us. In fact, someone must have alerted everyone in the village about our party because we had a tremendous number of locals there.

It was a grand party and having the locals join us added to the festivities. Our new found French friends were most appreciative of our hospitality. One of our men, who in civilian life was a song and dance man in NYC, sked for attention. He noted that Jacob Ruppert was responsible for our party and he should be honored, so, by unanimous vote, Jacob Ruppert was elected an honorary member of the 3125th Signal Service Company. Arousing cheer went up from all of those in attendance. It was a grand party!!!!!

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My how times have changed Joe. The first thing the military has done on every deployment since the Gulf War is to ban alcohol consumption, distribution, or possession by the troops - usually listed in General Order Number 1. During my second combat tour we were allowed to have one beer at an R&R site in Qatar but that was it...

Now, I still have a can of "Kufa" soda that 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division "liberated" from a factory outside of Najaf during the invasion of Iraq (OIF 1). Cans of Kufa soda were distributed throughout the Division until JAG got wind of it. Before it was all said and done the Division ended up paying the factory owner a lot of money for all the liberated soda - probably more money than the guy had ever made in his entire life up to that point...

Jacob Ruppert

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Must have been some time ago if the French were

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