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Posted on 08/21/2004 11:18:48 PM PDT by snippy_about_it
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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 Kilroy Was Everywhere During the World War II, the phrase 'Kilroy was here' began to appear wherever US troops were. It was often accompanied with the image of a face with a long nose and two big round eyes with small dot eyeballs peeking over a wall or a line representing a wall. Everything else, except sometimes his fingers gripping the top of the wall, was hidden behind the wall itself. Kilroy is a familiar image, whose origin is something of a mystery. In 1946, the American Transit Association had a radio programme called Speak to America. This programme sponsored a nationwide contest in an attempt to solve the mystery behind the origins of the mystical Kilroy. Speak to America found James J Kilroy of Massachusetts as a result of their search. That James J Kilroy was the originator of 'Kilroy was here' is currently the most commonly believed explanation for the phenomenon.  James J Kilroy was a ship inspector at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts, USA. It was his responsibility to check on how many holes a riveter had filled in a shift on any given day. In order to prevent double counting by dishonest riveters and to prove to his supervisors that he'd been doing his work, he began marking 'Kilroy was here' inside the hulls of the ships being built. He used yellow crayon so it would be easily visible; this way the off-shift inspectors wouldn't count the rivets more than once and pay the riveter for work he hadn't done. Once the ship became operative, carrying military troops that were headed overseas and bound for the war, the phrase was a complete mystery. Why it was there and being found in such out of the way places made it all the more mysterious. All they could be certain of was that Kilroy, whoever he was, had 'been there first'. As a joke, troops began placing the graffiti wherever the US forces landed and claimed it had already been there when they'd arrived. Whoever originated it, Kilroy quickly became the United States super GI who had always already been wherever men were sent by the military. The game quickly became a challenge to put the picture and slogan in the most unlikely places imaginable first.  From the Atterbury-Bakalar Air Museum, Columbus, Indiana. "The ubiquitous Kilroy, his long pathetic nose hanging over the wall with the two peering eyes above it, always the spectator, never inside. 'Kilroy was here.' It was marked on the standing walls of ruined buildings, on latrine walls and other places from Seattle to Miami and from Italy to Australia. No one ever knew who started it. Everybody understood it. If something bad had happened, Kilroy was responsible. If something good had happened, Kilroy had been outside looking in." - James Jones According to author Charles Panati, it's supposed to be atop Mount Everest, on the torch of the Statue of Liberty, on the underside of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, on the Marco Polo Bridge in China, on huts in Polynesia, on a girder on the George Washington Bridge in New York and scrawled in the dust on the moon. Panati also wrote that an outhouse was built, during the Potsdam Conference in July of 1945, for use exclusively by Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill. The first of the three to utilize the facility was Stalin. Upon emerging he inquired of his nearby aide, 'Who is Kilroy?' This was supposedly overheard by a translator and is where the story comes from. Kilroy and Hitler - The Rumour Near the end of World War II, Adolf Hitler was absolutely and completely paranoid regarding one insurgent in particular. This individual seemed able to get into everything and anything that was thought to be secure in Nazi, Germany. He (Hitler) ordered his best men to begin actively searching for this super-spy and all troops were commanded to shoot and kill this menace. The 'spy' Hitler was looking for was none other than Kilroy! GIs in occupied territory and spies in the German Army were vandalizing Nazi bases and equipment with the Kilroy logo and its well-known slogan. It wasn't intended as anything more than graffiti and a prank, but by the final year of Hitler's reign, he was convinced Kilroy could penetrate into any secure area and feared for his own safety thinking Kilroy was certain to kill him. Origins Oddly enough, as widespread as the Kilroy phenomenon was there is no concrete evidence to verify either when or where it began, nor who began it in each country (USA, England and Canada). In England, the Kilroy logo was known as Chad and his slogan consisted of 'Wot no...?' The blank was usually filled in with whatever there was a shortage of or whatever was being rationed at the time. The Oxford English Dictionary states that Chad's origin is obscure, but that British Cartoonist George Edward Chatterton may have created it. Though the James J Kilroy story seems to be the most likely point of origin for the 'Kilroy was here' legend, there is possible evidence of occurrences of the Kilroy logo much earlier than World War II.  Though Chad was popular in England, just as Kilroy was in the US military, still nobody (other than James J Kilroy) has stepped forward to claim him as their own invention, even though there were 26 men named Kilroy in the military during WW2. There was also a Canadian version known as Clem and in the late 1960s there was a version in Los Angeles, California that went by the name of Overby. Perhaps the theory of Kilroy being an unknown super soldier wasn't so far off after all...      |
You and I both!!
I'm not bad , I can hang drywall too. :-) Carpentry I'm not too good at.
LOL! Love the second one!!
Are you sure I was the one with a link? I don't remember one.
ROTFL!! Great Kerry/Conspiracy Guy graphic.
Snippy was thinking of doing something similar only having Kerry on his boat with a "Kilroy Was Here" graphic on the Cambodia border sign.
Doggone it, Phil! I just got my keyboard cleaned up and working after the last hilarious sKerry graphic you posted, and now it's soaked again! ROTFLMAO!!
You're killin' me.....and I love it!
I saw that here on FR but not at the Foxhole I don't think. We make our own. :-)
LOL. Thanks Phil.
LOL! You find some of the funniest kitty pics, SAM. This one's a keeper!
We see this ourselves almost every time we sit down to eat. There's usually at least one cat sitting in a chair on the other side of the table, peeking at us and hoping we'll slide a little treat across to them.
Their hopes are always dashed. :-)
BTTT!!!!!!!
Hello snippy & SamW
I didn't have time yesterday to read the thread, but I stopped by to see the topic before turning off my computer and running out the door to visit my parents. To my surprise my Mother brought up "Kilroy" and said she wondered where that came from. I told her the topic was on my forum for the day. Love the thread, and plan to print it out to share it with my folks. My dad was stationed in Guam during the the Korean War, but five out of ten siblings served in WW2. Both my mother's brothers served in WW2.
Kilroy has always been one of my favorite "mysteries" and it is still a source of comfort and joy to see it pictures from all over the world. (Love the one on the Iraqi hangar.)
Thanks for being a part of the Foxhole "family".
I assumed you knew one, since you were coming up with the stickers 'on the fly' on a few threads a while back.
No, Snippy and I were just on a roll that day and with the suggestions from other Freepers we'were cranking them out with a template we had.
I hope your mom enjoys hearing about the "Kilroy" mystery. I thank your family members for their service to our country.
Wouldn't it be funny if vets started putting Kilroys on Kerry's campaign stops? Lurch probably wouldn't get the joke.
LOL. No, we're just good. ;-)
Hi ct. Sam suggest we write "Bush was here". Since Kerry thought he was following him on the campaign trail anyway.
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