PDA

View Full Version : The Legends of "Kilroy Was Here"



thedrifter
12-20-02, 06:32 AM
Legend #1: This Legend of how "Kilroy was here" starts is with James J. Kilroy, a shipyard inspector during WWII. He chalked the words on bulkheads to show that he had been there and inspected the riveting in the newly constructed ship. To the troops in those ships, however, it was a complete mystery — all they knew for sure was that he had "been there first." As a joke, they began placing the graffiti wherever they (the US forces) landed or went, claiming it was already there when they arrived.

Kilroy became the US super-GI who always got there first — wherever GI's went. It became a challenge to place the logo in the most unlikely places. It was said to be atop Mt. Everest, the Statue of Liberty, the underside of the Arch de Triumphe, and scrawled in the dust on the moon. An outhouse was built for the exclusive use of Truman, Stalin, and Churchill who were there for the Potsdam conference. The first person to use it was Stalin. He emerged and asked his aide (in Russian), "Who is Kilroy?"

WWII UDT (Under Water Demolition - later Navy Seals) divers swam ashore on Japanese held islands in the Pacific to prepare the beaches for the coming landings by US troops. They were sure to be the first GIs there! On more than one occasion, they reported seeing "Kilroy was here" scrawled on make shift signs or as graffiti on enemy pillboxes. They, in turn, often left similar signs for the next incoming GIs.

The tradition continued in every US military theater of operations throughout and following WWII.

In 1946 the Transit Company of America held a contest offering a prize of a real trolley car to the person who could prove himself to be the "real" Kilroy. Almost forty men stepped forward to make that claim, but James Kilroy brought along officials from the shipyard and some of the riveters to help prove his authenticity. James Kilroy won the prize of the trolley car which he gave it to his nine children as a Christmas gift and set it up in their front yard for a playhouse.






Legend #2 Thanks to Eric Willeke, Savannah, GA. I always thought that Kilroy grew up in Boston and loved to sneak away from school to see the Red Sox games looking over the wall in left field at Fenway Park. When the war broke out, he became an artillery observer and when his unit landed at Normandy, the locals felt that, with his nose, he looked like Charles De Gaulle. General Eisenhower decided to dress him as the French General posing in a fake headquarters to convince German spies that he was the French General marshaling troops for the real invasion. The Germans held their reserves waiting for the invasion led by De Gaulle which enabled the famous breakthrough at St Lo. After meeting De Gaulle nose to nose, he was returned to his unit where his buddies scrawled "Kilroy was here" wherever they went. Kilroy left the Army after the war to again see his beloved Red Sox at his favorite spot on the green monster.

If this story is not true, it should be.






Legend #2 Thanks to Eric Willeke, Savannah, GA. I always thought that Kilroy grew up in Boston and loved to sneak away from school to see the Red Sox games looking over the wall in left field at Fenway Park. When the war broke out, he became an artillery observer and when his unit landed at Normandy, the locals felt that, with his nose, he looked like Charles De Gaulle. General Eisenhower decided to dress him as the French General posing in a fake headquarters to convince German spies that he was the French General marshaling troops for the real invasion. The Germans held their reserves waiting for the invasion led by De Gaulle which enabled the famous breakthrough at St Lo. After meeting De Gaulle nose to nose, he was returned to his unit where his buddies scrawled "Kilroy was here" wherever they went. Kilroy left the Army after the war to again see his beloved Red Sox at his favorite spot on the green monster.

If this story is not true, it should be.






Legend #3: Thanks to John F. Griffin Quincy MA. This is how we know the story in Massachusetts. It adds to your selections already posted . . . Kilroy was an inspector in a factory in Braintree, Massachusetts. (just south of Boston). When the war kicked off, he employed women to run the factory lines. The women were paid by the amount of items they produced that day. At the end of the day Kilroy would walk along the factory line and chalk off at each station how much the woman had completed that day. Well, the women got smart about the situation and began erasing his chalk lines and moving them back a few places so when they started the next day they already had a few completed and obviously earned more money. Well, as Kilroy then himself got smart about this, he began using other markings besides a line. The "outsmarting match" continued between the women and Kilroy until he began to draw images and signing his name. It is the most popular image of Kilroy with his signature that hardest to duplicate exactly and thus that is the marking that endured.

At least that is somewhat how we tell it from the home front.


http://www.kilroywashere.org/001-Pages/01-0KilroyLegends.html



Sempers,

Roger

thedrifter
05-02-05, 05:04 PM
Yes, 'Kilroy was here' and to fans he still is


By Jennifer Harper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES


Kilroy is still here.
James L. Kilroy, that is. The ship inspector credited with creating one of America's most potent military mottos remains dear to the nation's heart.
On the job around 1942, he wrote just three words in presumed anonymity on the hull of a Liberty ship: "Kilroy was here."
Over time, the phrase came to mean there was no place so remote that the U.S. military could not reach it.
There's a campaign to put his catch phrase on a postage stamp. Others hope to persuade the U.S. Navy to christen a "USS Kilroy." There are Kilroy hats, bumper stickers and shirts. There's a photo competition, an essay contest, a fan club and a swell anniversary celebration planned for mid-May.

To the delight of those who discover it, the Kilroy message has been engraved upon the new World War II Memorial on the Mall.
" 'Kilroy was here' meant a lot to those in World War II and the Korean War. But let me tell you, it lives on through today's military," said Michael Condon of the United States Naval Shipbuilding Museum in Massachusetts -- once the Quincy Four River Shipyard and home base of the original Mr. Kilroy, who died in 1962.
"The phrase has popped up in the caves of Afghanistan, and in Iraq. It's still a symbol of just how great the American spirit can be. It still means something to people," Mr. Condon said.
Mr. Kilroy was hired to inspect rivet holes in the bellies of troop ships before their launch. Other inspectors used simple chalk marks, but Mr. Kilroy hastily scrawled "Kilroy was here" in yellow crayon.
The idea that some mysterious wag "had been there first" resonated with troops who sailed aboard the ships. They soon began writing the same thing wherever they landed, commonly embellished with a bug-eyed cartoon.
Once Americans occupied German territory toward the war's end, the ubiquitous phrase was said to have convinced Adolf Hitler himself that Kilroy was an American "super soldier," and the German dictator ordered undercover agents to capture him.
"The motto traveled the globe and became a rallying cry and a powerful morale booster for Allied troops on land, air and sea," Mr. Condon said.
Press accounts of the time reported that more than one woman went into the hospital delivery room with a coy "Kilroy was here" painted on her abdomen. The sentiment has since appeared atop Mount Everest and in the dust of the moon, according to historian Charles Panati, who has written a half dozen books on the origins of popular sayings.
Kilroy remains a global kind of guy.
According to Mr. Condon, the shipbuilding museum will celebrate both phrase and man on May 15 aboard the USS Salem, a preserved Heavy Cruiser. The museum is urging the public to download a Kilroy flyer from a new Web site, www.whereiskilroy.com, then take photos of themselves in odd locations. There's a Kilroy essay contest as well.
The museum is also coordinating efforts to persuade the U.S. Postal Service to issue a Kilroy stamp while a postcard-writing campaign directed to Navy Secretary Gordon England is already under way, lobbying for a Kilroy namesake ship.
The Australia-based Kilroy Was Here fan club, www.kilroywashere.org, has assembled scores of Kilroy stories and sightings from spots around the world, plus Kilroy-themed wearables and a message board.
"The first time I saw the name Kilroy was on the bulkhead of a Liberty ship in the aft head, in Nov., 1942, when I was a member of a U.S. Navy gun crew," wrote one fan. "As I was a dopey 19-year-old, I searched the crew list for a Kilroy. Imagine that. No Kilroy. Sixty-three years later, I still think of my invisible friend."


Ellie