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

[Shapiro, Fred]

The forthcoming New Yale Book of Quotations notes that the Texacts newspaper of the Sheppard Field Army base in Texas posed the question "Who is Kilroy?" in its April 21, 1945 issue.

Fred Shapiro


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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 9:10 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Subject: Re: "Who was Kilroy?" June 26, 1945 (in-print antedating?)

"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
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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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