Kilroy Was Here
Porkchop
the war with a small statue of a pregnant girl. And inscripted on the
bottom was "Kilory Was Here." What does this mean and what does it
have to do with WW2 (besides an obvious rape and pillage joke). Who
was Kilroy , and when did he first strike?
Thanks much!
Frederick J. Barnett Jr.
(Porkchop) sent a subspace communication stating:
"Kilroy was here" was something GIs would write, usually along
with a little picture (for an example, see my personal web site at
http://www.eatel.net/~fred/) on whatever was handy as they marched
through Europe, and I'm assuming the Pacific islands too. As far as I
know, there's no "official" explanation as to why they started doing
this, but I will relate one story I remember that was given as a
possible origin.
According to this story, Kilroy was an equipment packer, or
inspector, who was accused of not doing his job. So, in order to prove
he was, he started writing on the crates he was assigned, "Kilroy was
here." When the crates reached their destinations overseas, the
soldiers saw the mark, and just started copying it as they moved
around.
Frederick J. Barnett http://www.eatel.net/~fred/
fr...@eatel.net
HTML Writers Guild Governing Board Member http://www.hwg.org/
The Baton Rouge Astronomical Society
http://www.eatel.net/~fred/bras/bras.html
The BREC, LSU, BRAS Highland Road Park Observatory
http://www.phys.lsu.edu/observatory/
"Someone's got to take the responsibility if the job's going to get done!! Do you think that's easy?!" Gregory Peck - The Guns Of Navarone
TSBench
(Porkchop) writes:
>Can anyone tell me the origin of this term? My father came back after
>the war with a small statue of a pregnant girl. And inscripted on the
>bottom was "Kilory Was Here." What does this mean and what does it
>have to do with WW2 (besides an obvious rape and pillage joke). Who
>was Kilroy , and when did he first strike?>>>
Kilroy was a quality control inspector at the Beth Steel Fore River shipyard in
Quincy, Massachusetts, during WW2. He used to chalk Kilroy Was Here on welds
and other work he inspected and passed. The saying worked its way into common
usage.
Regards,
TSB
Bill Walker...Producer and Cohost of The Shooting Bench radio
program....General Manager, WDIS-Radio, Norfolk, Massachusetts.
Rich Rostrom
> Can anyone tell me the origin of this term? My father came back after
> the war with a small statue of a pregnant girl. And inscripted on the
> bottom was "Kilroy Was Here." What does this mean and what does it
> have to do with WW2 (besides an obvious rape and pillage joke).
Scribbling "Kilroy was here" was a humorous way for U.S. troops to
mark their presence in the many unprecedented places they went during
the war.
The statuette sounds like a joke on this joke. Not a matter of rape,
but of Americans being present and, as elsewhere, tremendously active.
(Aggressive, energetic men often do have their way with women without
it necessarily being _rape_.)
> Who was Kilroy , and when did he first strike?
Nobody knows. One source I have says it first appeared in 1943, and
referred to a sergeant in the Air Transport Command.
--
Rich Rostrom | "Ah, White Lightning, that splits the skull and
| encourages the body and the sentiments!"
R-Rostrom@ |
mcs.net | -- R. A. Lafferty, _The Reefs of Earth_
Cub driver
Kilroy was one of the standing jokes of the U.S. military in WWII. The
original, or at least the "official" version that was played up at
home, was a sketch of a moronic cartoon face peering over a
wall--basically, the fingers of his right and left hands, and the dome
of his bald head with just the eyes showing.
Once Kilroy became universal as graffito on walls--the more unlikely,
the better, with Hitler's bunker no doubt being the ultimate goal of
the graffito artists--it was a natural step to make jokes out of the
concept. "Kilroy was here" on the protruding belly of a British (for
example) woman was only one of the possibilities.
RJD9999
>Can anyone tell me the origin of this term? My father came back after
>the war with a small statue of a pregnant girl. And inscripted on the
>bottom was "Kilory Was Here." What does this mean and what does it
>have to do with WW2 (besides an obvious rape and pillage joke). Who
>was Kilroy , and when did he first strike?
>
>
>Thanks much!
>
Rather than rely on memory, this is extracted from:
http://www.lizardworks.com/kilroy.html
Kilroy has a fairly certain history. James J. Kilroy was employed during the
war at the Bethlehem Steel Company's Quincy shipyard inspecting parts of
warships under construction. To satisfy his superiors that he was doing his job
he scribbled in yellow crayon 'Kilroy was here' on inspected work. It is
believed that the shipyard workers who joined the armed forces were responsible
for the world-wide spread.
William E. Colburn
<nigh...@pavilion.co.uk> wrote:
> That is Chad, from wartime Britain. He would appear looking over a wall
> on which was chalked 'Wot No <insert current shortage here>?'
>
Often it was ICE. And it still holds true in Old Blighty.
George Hardy
Rostrom) says:
>nicke...@mindspring.com (Porkchop) wrote:
>> Can anyone tell me the origin of this term?
>> Who was Kilroy , and when did he first strike?
>Nobody knows.
Well, I wouldn't go that far. Kilroy was an inspector at
the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Instead of putting a more usual
"passed" mark on the large parts, he wrote "Kilroy was
here." The marks had to be large because the parts were
large, and the mark had be visible to the workmen. In this
case, the workman might be a crane operator.
Yes, the expression became popular. Evidence of having
been there, as with the pregnant girl.
If I remember correctly, the expression was more popular in
the Pacific Theater than in the European theaters.
GFH
***************************************************************
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The Anchor Stone Building Set (Anker-Steinbaukasten) Home Page
See what makes me tick.
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Jon Cohen
http://tqd.advanced.org/3205/gather/U960825.001359.html
http://www.worldtrans.org/pos/kilroy.html
http://www.kilroy-presents.com/Who_Was_Kilroy_/who_was_kilroy_.html
http://www.kilroy.com/photographs/KilroyWasHere/
http://www.3dair.com/whois.htm
Enjoy the read.
nightjar
Cub driver wrote in message <37c184f9...@news.usenetserver.com>...
>
>Kilroy was one of the standing jokes of the U.S. military in WWII. The
>original, or at least the "official" version that was played up at
>home, was a sketch of a moronic cartoon face peering over a
>wall--basically, the fingers of his right and left hands, and the dome
>of his bald head with just the eyes showing.
That is Chad, from wartime Britain. He would appear looking over a wall
on which was chalked 'Wot No <insert current shortage here>?'
As for Kilroy, although that particular name is WW2, his spiritual
predecessors have had their names written on walls at least as early as
Ancient Rome.
Colin Bignell
M.J.Powell
<no...@the.moment> writes
>Like so:
> \\|//
> (O O)
> ===============oOo=(_)=oOo============
This is 'Chad'.
Usually with the slogan 'Wot no xxxxxxx'. Insert 'cigarettes, batteries,
eggs' etc.
Mike
--
M.J.Powell.
John Wager
Abdullah Azad wrote:
> Like so:
> \\|//
> (O O)
> ===============oOo=(_)=oOo============
I vaguely remember hearing another piece of this puzzle:
That the kilroy graphic was actually a bit of circuit diagram
for some kind of electronics, and this got translated
soon into a cartoon figure. Does this ring a bell (or
trip a circuit) with anyone?
-------------------
John Wager
jwa...@mediaone.net
efr...@mocha.memphis.edu
> That the kilroy graphic was actually a bit of circuit diagram
> for some kind of electronics, and this got translated
> soon into a cartoon figure. Does this ring a bell (or
> trip a circuit) with anyone?
That's what Pynchon says in _Gravity's Rainbow_,
but that may just be engineers' folklore.
The issue comes up here every few years. Check
DejaNews.
Ed Frank
rmk
<jwa...@mediaone.net> wrote:
>|Abdullah Azad wrote:
>|> Like so:
>|> \\|//
>|> (O O)
>|> ===============oOo=(_)=oOo============
>|I vaguely remember hearing another piece of this puzzle:
>|That the kilroy graphic was actually a bit of circuit diagram
>|for some kind of electronics, and this got translated
>|soon into a cartoon figure. Does this ring a bell (or
>|trip a circuit) with anyone?
The way I remember it was that the original was a Prof'sdrawing of
an RC circuit:
-------/\/\/\-----| |---/\/\/\---
The Prof first indicates the flow of the charge across the the
plates of the capacitor with an arc above the schematic then the back
flow of the charge with a smaller arc beneath. After the prof leaves
the room a wag adds the eyes, and the hair. (I am not talented enough
to draw an ascii of the final but it comes out looking much like AA's
highly creative drawing above.
...rmk