Wordless Wednesday: The GIs Best Friend

I ran across this extract from Isaac Asimov's book, Earth is Room Enough, where the author describes a conversation filled with remembrances of two World War II veterans:

They drank beer and reminisced as men will who have met after long separation. They called to mind the days under fire. They remembered sergeants and girls, both with exaggeration. Deadly things became humorous in retrospect, and trifles disregarded for ten years were hauled out for airing. Including, of course, the perennial mystery: "How do you account for it?" asked the first. "Who started it?" The second shrugged. "No one started it. Everyone was doing it, like a disease. You, too, I suppose." The first chuckled. The third one said softly, "I never saw the fun it it. Maybe because I came across it first when I was under fire for the first time. North Africa." "Really?" said the second. "The first night on the beaches of Oran. I was getting under cover, making for some native shack and I saw it in the lights of a flare."

Who were they talking about? The GIs best friend, a simple doodle or grafitti, that showed up in the most irreverent places everywhere GIs were.

Kilroy Engraving at the National World War II Memorial; author's
personal collection

The idea for this post came from Geneabloggers.com.