WARREN PEACE, WHO, WHERE & WHEN

A few years ago, IMPS club member who was married at the War and Peace Show, Mr. Nick Crowhurst sent Rex Cadman a drawing of a bear dressed in camouflage driving a Jeep. Nick was an amateur cartoonist who was just doodling. For a while the bear just laid around in files. Back in 1998 it was decided to try and give the bear more input and Rex contacted Nick to ask if he could do the bear in different positions, turning left, turning right and marching etc. Nick duly obliged. Once again the new drawings sat around for a while. The general feeling in the office was he was right for our image but what do we do with him.

By sheer coincidence The War and Peace Collection was in need of a new low loader driver. Luckily for us Paul Shea was recommended. Paul started working for War and Peace in 1999. His first task was to move all the vehicles home to their respective owners after the 1999 show. During this time we also discovered that Paul had hidden talents. He understood and liked computers and as The War and Peace office was just starting to go hi tech it wasn't long before the low loader was parked outside and Paul found himself driving a desk.

For those of you who have visited the War and Peace office even with all good intent paperwork flies in all directions and on one of those great cleanup days Paul Shea came across the pictures of the bear. "What are we doing with these" he asked. Hopefully we are going to incorporate him in The War and Peace Show, but at the present we don't know how was the reply. Once again the bear was filed away.

Some weeks later Paul came into the office with the "I've got a great idea" look on his face. According to Paul the idea had come to him in the middle of the night, most of us have more important things to think about whilst we sleep, but regardless of that, Paul had been selling his house through an estate agent whose name was Warren Price. The story goes whilst in a deep sleep, Paul sat up and shouted out loud "WARREN PRICE" -"WARREN PEACE", that's a great name for that bear. Walt Disney has Mickey Mouse, McDonalds have Ronald McDonald and KFC have the Colonel, so why shouldn't we have Warren Peace the bear.

In 2000 Warren was quietly launched on the unsuspecting military vehicle world. Warren Peace stickers started to appear on sign boards at the show. Looking back he must have been popular as any sign with Warren on disappeared. By 2001 Warren had crept onto the web site, and after the 2001 show Warren's popularity started to really grow as children and families began looking for badges, balloons and stickers as give-aways. He's ended up being quite a hit with the kids. All we have to do now is persuade him to turn up at War and Peace in person.