EMBDEN – Police are asking for help in tracking down the culprits who stripped a Jeep owned by a Maine soldier who just returned from Iraq.

Sgt. Curtis Mullin returned to his unit’s base in Fort Lewis, Wash., last week after 14 months overseas. Before arriving in the United States, he asked his father to put his 1987 Jeep out by the road in front of his home in Embden with a “for sale” sign on it so he could use the proceeds to buy a newer vehicle.

Mullin’s father told the Morning Sentinel in Waterville that he awoke one morning last week to find that somebody had popped the top off the vehicle and taken two doors.

He said it burns him up that somebody would do such a thing while his son has been fighting for his life in Iraq.