Thursday, October 3, 2013

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 !

28 comments:

  1. I never heard the story of the true Kilroy - I can only imagine soldiers going across the world to fight the destruction of freedom, seeing that, and laughing...

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  2. Kilroy is everywhere...Except on the left side of the isle on Congress. He wouldn't go near those rat bastards.

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  3. Excellent post buddy. Absolutely excellent!

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  4. Great story. Thanks for sharing!

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  5. Saw this sign everywhere when I was a kid. Even drew it a few times myself. Thanks for the back story.

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  6. Race, I remember my mother and father putting this around. I just recently heard this story.

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  7. Curmudgeon, you have exquisite taste, thank you.

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  8. Kristin, we've missed you! Glad you enjoyed.

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  9. Dick, your story sounds familiar. We must be the same age.

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  10. God Bless you World War II Veterans!

    That was awesome Odie. ☺

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  11. If Barry doesn't knock it off, some old Ranger who survived Cisterna or Pointe du Hoc is gonna carve that little motto on Choom's scrawny ass.

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  12. That's a great post! Thanks Odie.

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  13. Semper Fidelis and God bless you World War II Veterans!

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  14. Rosie and Kilroy the riveters were the backbone of our nation. They worked for very little and didn't squeal about a shutdown...Not much backbone to be seen today!

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  15. Scotty, we've become a nation of complainers.

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  16. I must have read "Kilroy was Here" in a thousand different places, but I do have to say he spent far too much time in the JOHN!

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Put it here ... I can't wait to read it. I have the Captcha turned OFF but blogger insists it be there. You should be able to bypass it.

** Anonymous, please use a name at the end of your comment. You're all starting to look alike.

*** Moderation has been added due to Spam and a Commenter a little too caustic. I welcome comments, but talk of killing and racist (or even close to racist) are not welcome.