Honoring the World War II Vets ... Because the Dems won't

KILROY WAS HERE !

He is engraved in stone in the National War Memorial 

in Washington, DC- 

back in a small alcove where very few people have seen it. 

For the WWII generation, this will bring back memories. 

For you younger folks, it's a bit of trivia that is a part of our 

American history. Anyone born in 1913 to about 1950, 

is familiar with Kilroy. No one knew why he was so well known- 

but everybody seemed to get into it.
 

So who was Kilroy?

In 1946 the American Transit Association, through its radio program, 

"Speak to America ," sponsored a nationwide contest to 

find the real Kilroy, offering a prize of a real trolley car to the person 

who could prove himself to be the genuine article. 

Almost 40 men stepped forward to make that claim, 

but only James Kilroy from Halifax , Massachusetts , had evidence of his identity.

'Kilroy' was a 46-year old shipyard worker during the 

war who worked as a checker at the Fore River Shipyard 

in Quincy . His job was to go around and check on the 

number of rivets completed. Riveters were on piecework and 

got paid by the rivet. He would count a block of rivets and 

put a check mark in semi-waxed lumber chalk, so the rivets 

wouldn't be counted twice. When Kilroy went off duty, 

the riveters would erase the mark.

Later on, an off-shift inspector would come through 

and count the rivets a second time, 

resulting in double pay for the riveters.

One day Kilroy's boss called him into his office. 

The foreman was upset about all the wages being paid 

to riveters, and asked him to investigate. It was then 

he realized what had been going on. The tight spaces he 

had to crawl in to check the rivets didn't lend themselves to 

lugging around a paint can and brush, so Kilroy decided to 

stick with the waxy chalk. He continued to put his check 

mark on each job he inspected, but added 

'KILROY WAS HERE' 

in king-sized letters next to the check, and eventually 

added the sketch of the chap with the long nose peering 

over the fence and that became part of the Kilroy message.

Once he did that, the riveters stopped trying to wipe 

away his marks. Ordinarily the rivets and chalk marks 

would have been covered up with paint. With the war on, 

however, ships were leaving the Quincy Yard so fast 

that there wasn't time to paint them. As a result, 

Kilroy's inspection "trademark" was seen by thousands of 

servicemen who boarded the troopships the yard produced.

His message apparently rang a bell with the servicemen, 

because they picked it up and spread it all over 

Europe and the South Pacific.

Before war's end, "Kilroy" had been here, there, 

and everywhere on the long hauls to Berlin and Tokyo . 

To the troops outbound in those ships, however, 

he was a complete mystery; all they knew for sure was 

that someone named Kilroy had "been there first." 

As a joke, U.S. servicemen began placing the graffiti 

wherever they landed, claiming it was 

already there when they arrived.

Kilroy became the U.S. super-GI who had always 

"already been" wherever GIs went. It became a challenge 

to place the logo in the most unlikely places imaginable

 (it is said to be atop Mt. Everest , the Statue of Liberty , 

the underside of the Arc de Triomphe, 

and even scrawled in the dust on the moon.

As the war went on, the legend grew. Underwater demolition 

teams routinely sneaked ashore on Japanese-held islands in the 

Pacific to map the terrain for coming invasions by 

U.S. troops (and thus, presumably, were the first GI's there). 

On one occasion, however, they reported seeing 

enemy troops painting over the Kilroy logo!

In 1945, an outhouse was built for the exclusive use of Roosevelt, 

Stalin, and Churchill at the Potsdam conference. 

Its' first occupant was Stalin, who emerged and 

asked his aide (in Russian), "Who is Kilroy?"

 To help prove his authenticity in 1946, James Kilroy 

brought along officials from the shipyard and some 

of the riveters. He won the trolley car, which he gave to 

his nine children as a Christmas gift and set it up as a 

playhouse in the Kilroy yard in Halifax , Massachusetts .

 And The Tradition Continues...

 EVEN Outside Osama Bin Laden's House!!!

Share This Bit Of Historic Humor

With All Your Friends! :)

God Bless you World War II Veterans !