MILITARY MIGHT
WHEN you come head-to-head with a behemoth M43 on a one-lane suspension bridge in the middle of nowhere, one must reflect on the proverb ‘might is right’. This was the case when we ran into Lucky Hilmanofski and this ultra-cool, Korean War era overland ambulance in the Northern Sierra Nevada. He hit the gas and we hit reverse. Fortunately, I’ve known Lucky for years (yes, that’s really his name) and he was just messing with us, as a dedicated jarhead will do.
Introduced in 1951, the M43 was the ambulance variant of the M37 Power Wagon, which in turn was a redesign of the battle-proven World War II era Dodge WC Series. Gearing up to take on communists on the Korean Peninsula, six prototypes were produced in mid-1950 for testing and the first of these snub-nosed
