[Ads-l] "Who was Kilroy?" June 26, 1945 (in-print antedating?)

[Stephen Goranson]

"Who is Kilroy?"
Sgt. Roger Angell
Google Books

SG
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From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Stephen Goranson <goranson at DUKE.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, March 25, 2021 8:50 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Subject: "Who was Kilroy?" June 26, 1945 (in-print antedating?)

A story by Rogel Angell (likely (?) the later-famous baseball writer, who was in the Army Air Forces), Brief vol. 2, no. 30 (title page missing, but by sequence)   page 18/1 [my elipses] [also in later issues of this title, including a letter to editor speculation, July 17 p. 2/3]:

Who is Kilroy?
Kilroy is the guy who just stepped out of the orderly room as you came in. Kilroy was in the latrine....latest AAF gag. ....  [Kilroy 4x]... "Kilroy ditched here." Kilroy will be here any day, but you won't see him.

Stephen Goranson
http://people.duke.edu/~goranson/

PS On "in-print":
Robert Capa, Slightly Out of Focus (NY, 1947) page 210 reports seeing, near Christmastime 1944:

On the black, charred walls of an abandoned farm [near Bastogne] scrawled in white chalk, was the legend of McAuliffe's GI's: KILROY WAS STUCK HERE.


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