Kilroy was here

By JEANNIE WILEY WOLF
STAFF WRITER

Kilroy is back.

If you’ve been observant, you may have seen cartoon drawings of a man peeking over a wall on billboards, store windows and signs around town this month.

The character is Kilroy, and the drawing was a popular piece of graffiti drawn by American troops in the Atlantic Theater and later the Pacific Theater during World War II.

Kilroy has shown up again, this time as a local campaign designed to honor veterans of World War II and teach young people about a significant piece of memorabilia from the era, said Bob Driftmyer, 9th District commander of AMVETS and past commander of AMVETS Post 21, Findlay.

“I’m sure everybody’s seen it once, but they might not have known what it was,” Driftmyer said. “We felt it was time to do something for the World War II guys since we’re losing them so quickly.”

He got the idea after talking with World War II veteran George Bjorling. Bjorling had asked a friend who was in the Battle of the Bulge if he remembered Kilroy.

“The reason George brought it up was he had some pictures of his Honor Flight trip, and he had a picture of Kilroy that is actually engraved in two different places on the (World War II) memorial,” Driftmyer said.

Bjorling showed the picture to his friend who then remembered the cartoon.

“George said that really bothered him,” said Driftmyer. “He said guys my age are dropping like flies and he said, we need to get these guys thinking a little bit.”

Driftmyer did some research and discovered that approximately 15,000 World War II and Korean War veterans are dying every day. He said he wanted to honor these veterans and bring back what may be good memories of the war by displaying the graffiti.

As a result, pictures of Kilroy started showing up around town.

Driftmyer said there are several stories associated with the origin of Kilroy. According to the most popular, James Kilroy was a welding inspector at the Navy shipyard in New England.

“He would inspect rivets on the ships, and he would take chalk and circle the rivets, and that’s how the riveters got paid,” he said.

But the riveters got smart and started wiping off the chalk marks. Kilroy didn’t know he’d already checked them, and the men would receive double pay.

“So he caught on and legend has it he started writing ‘Kilroy was here,'” said Driftmyer.

The markings sometimes showed up inside areas of ships that were welded shut.

“Later when they would open the ship up, they would see ‘Kilroy was here.’ So they kind of accredited it to him, and it just caught on. And pretty soon they started putting Kilroy on everything,” he said.

Kilroy became a super soldier, said Driftmyer.

“He was everywhere first. He was where you least expected him to be, or where you most expected him to be,” he said. “He kind of stood for confusion, humor and hope.”

Driftmyer said there’s a story that Harry Truman, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin had a meeting.

“Well, there was no latrine there so they built a latrine, just for these three guys. Nobody else was allowed in there,” he said. “Stalin was the first one to use it. He came out and wanted to know who Kilroy was because Kilroy was already there.”

“If you have a whole roomful of World War II veterans, if you have 100 veterans in here, you’d have 100 different Kilroy stories, and I’m sure 99 percent of them would be funny stories. And that’s what George wanted was something so these guys could remember the good times back then,” said Driftmyer.

Bjorling, 87, recalls seeing Kilroy as a soldier during the war. He was reminded of the cartoon again when he went on Honor Flight in 2011.

“My daughter was my attendant and we went to the memorial. And at the memorial where you walk in, there’s two granite posts. Kilroy is engraved on the posts there,” he said. “That’s what kind of kicked this off with me because then I remembered it when I was in the service.”

Bjorling’s friend John Rieker, who is 89, said he saw Kilroy for the first time in England.

“I saw Kilroy all the way from England to Germany,” he said.

Rieker, who served in the Army, was just 19 when he was wounded by shrapnel in the Battle of the Bulge.

“I was lucky to get out, that’s all I can tell you,” he said.

He was in and out of the hospital for nine months with injuries to his back, legs and hip and underwent five operations.

“I’m very fortunate that I’m still here. If I live until December it will be 70 years,” Rieker said.

“I always wondered how that thing (Kilroy) got ahead of you. Wherever you went, it was there,” he said. “I always thought the outfit ahead of us put it there, but maybe the outfit ahead of them put it there.”

Bjorling enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps with dreams of becoming a fighter pilot. Two months after finishing basic training, the war ended.

“They didn’t need any more pilots, and that blew my dream. I wanted to fly,” he said.

Bjorling was given his choice of becoming an aircraft mechanic, a cryptographer or a meteorologist. He decided on meteorology because he thought it had the best future. After training, he was assigned to a weather station at St. Lucia in the British West Indies for a year.

“I remember seeing an occasional ‘Kilroy was here’ type of thing, just occasionally,” he said. “I can’t remember where I saw it for the first time, but I remember it right at the end of the war and I knew so many guys who had been overseas and got hurt, and they probably talked about it.”

Driftmyer’s campaign started with Kilroy on electronic billboards on Bright Road and at the intersection of Main and Center streets.

“We used the version from the memorial,” he said. “It’s so simple to draw and he was drawn in many, many different ways, but everybody knew who Kilroy was.”

After two weeks on the billboards, Kilroy stickers appeared on the windows of 50 businesses downtown and a banner on the Hancock County Courthouse, followed by ads in The Courier.

“People are going to say, what’s with this Kilroy?” said Rieker.

“That’s the idea,” Driftmyer said. “And hopefully when they ask what does that mean, there will be fellows like you that hear it and say ‘I can answer that for you.'”

Driftmyer said the campaign costs were about $800. Donations were received from the AMVETS, Sons of AMVETS, the AMVETS Auxiliary, Junior AMVETS and the Marine Corps League.

Ryan Radabugh, Sons of AMVETS Post 21 commander, said the campaign will close with an open house from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Nov. 8 at the AMVETS, 423 W. Trenton Ave. The event will include a chili coo-koff. For $5, diners can have all they care to eat. World War II veterans will eat free of charge.

“If veterans come out, hopefully we can get some of them to tell their story, and we’ll let the public know what this is all about,” Radabaugh said.

“It’s just our way of honoring the World War II guys,” added Driftmyer.

“We wanted to bring some of those memories back and to teach the younger generation about the significant sacrifices these vets made for their country, and to show and teach them about a piece of significant memorabilia of that era,” he said.

Wolf: 419-427-8419
Send an E-mail to Jeannie Wolf

                                      Sons of AMVETS Dept. of Ohio, Inc. 

960 Checkrein Avenue Columbus OH 43229 Phone: 614.985.3380 Fax: 614.985.3381

                                               Email Dept. Headquarters