YANK MAGAZINE, WW II AND MY DAD

Windy City Kitty
"Thank heaven you didn't drop in five minutes ago--I didn't have a bit of makeup on."Cartoon by Sgt. Jack CroweYANK 4 Aug 1944 Down Under Edition
Posted by YANK at 5:20 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: cartoons


"Windy City Kitty" was my dad's creation -- published by YANK (Down Under) during WWII.

It's kind of an interesting story about how my dad came to work on the Yank staff. He joined the Army before the war (along with two other nineteen year olds from Racine, Wisconsin – my dad’s - and my own home town) not because they were going to be careerists, but rather because the Army had a program that guaranteed that if you joined at that time (late ’39, early 40) and served one year, you'd be done with your military career forever – “no matter what.” That sounded like a great deal to my dad and his young friends. The depression was still on and war clouds were on the horizon. The idea of getting into the service early and getting out early (and making a few bucks in the process) held great appeal for the Wisconsin Three. They joined and served their year in Wisconsin’s the 32nd Medical Regiment, stationed I believe, near Shelby, Mississippi.

The year passed. But of course when that year was nearing its end, the Japanese were severely running amok in China and SE Asia and America needed to shore-up its bases in the Pacific to discourage any Japanese aggression toward those American facilities. So (big surprise!) my dad and his two buddies were "stop-lossed" (in today’s parlance) – ordered to stay in uniform and board the SS James Parker - a small, old, barely sea-worth tramp steamer that had been refitted to carry troops to the Philippines .

Although the voyage started as a kind of a great adventure, the atmosphere on the ship soon turned very grim. The leaky little scow was like a cork in the big Pacific swells and the troops became mightily sea-sick. The below-decks were not only overflowing with GIs, but their vomit and the chunky liquid “darker side” of their gastro-intestinal tracts as well. This foul-smelling brew was six inches deep on most decks, so deep in the hull that the ballast-pumps were churning at their clogged full speed, 24 hours a day, seven day a week, just to keep parity with the ever-replenishing soup de jour. When the ship would roll Starboard, this yellow-brown sea would charge in a huge wave toward the right internal side of the vessel, splash into a spectacular display as it hit the wall, then begin churning back toward the vessel’s port side in another mini tsunami that would explode against the other inner hull – all to the dulcimer tones of moaning, cursing and crying young GIs.

Well, surprise. For God knows what reason, my father didn’t get sick. Great, right? Well, not so great. Because my father and a few other young troops who somehow didn’t get sick were assigned “shit and puke” duty. That is, they were tasked with collecting the great lakes of GI body fluids inside the ship by use of fifty gallon drums that would be humped stairway by stairway up to the ship’s deck and tossed overboard.

The hours were long and the work – well, shitty and pukey. My dad had to get off this miserable duty. This necessity soon became the mother of invention.

My dad was an artist in high-school – and a good one. In fact, in 1938) he sent a cartoon strip he’d done to a Hollywood producer after failing to get it published in print, thinking its story would make a pretty good movie. It did. Although my dad was never credited or paid for it, his story became the basis for a Warner Brothers film released in 1940 (I know this to be fact; I’ve seen both his comic strip and the movie, and they are undeniably very much the same.). But none of that is the real point. The point is that my dad had to get away from the shit and puke. All he needed was a writer. He found one; another member of the “shit and puke” detail who’d been a writer for his high school newspaper at some PS in Brooklyn. Soon the two shored up a scheme that might get them relieved fro their janitorial duties. The two young men, one a private, my dad a corporal, went to their CO and said, “Sir, morale on this is pretty low on this ship, sir.” Naturally, their Commanding Officer concurred. “So,” my dad went on, “We’ve got an idea that’ll fix that, sir. There’s a mimeograph machine aboard this ship and standing before you are two ‘wizards of print.’ He’s a writer – a great one – and I’m a cartoonist – and I’m pretty good too, sir. So here’s our idea. We – he and I – we’d like to put out a newspaper – you know, all the news that’s fit to print on this ship. We’d like to call it the ‘James Parker Express.’ It’ll amuse and entertain the troops and morale will definitely go through the roof! We can do this, sir – all you have to say is, ‘go do it.’”

Well, their CO bought it, and my dad and his new buddy left Shit & Puke Command to devote their time to publishing their first mimeographed edition of the “James Parker Express.” For my dad, it worked out wonderfully. Not only did he never heft another fifty gallon drum of broiling GI waste, but ultimately the publishing of this little paper probably saved his life.

Army media types somehow got a hold of a single weeky edition of the “James Parker Express” (it was probably found on one of the James Parker’s Island replenishment stops) and my dad’s cartoons were noticed. Soon, my dad received relocation orders to Sydney, Australia. He said good bye to the other members of the “Wisconsin Three” and headed off - as ordered.

He then didn’t know that that would be the last time he’d see the two friends he grew up with ever again. Because soon after their separation, Pearl Harbor was bombed and the Philippines attacked. Not long after that Corregidor fell, and my dad’s two high school buddies were killed by the Japanese on the Bataan death-march after the Island-chain’s surrender.

My dad went on to join the then-forming YANK magazine staff and created his racy cartoon character named “Windy City Kitty,” a worldly little trollop-tease from Chicago, Illinois. “Kitty” became a fixture on the back page of YANK Magazine (Down Under) sharing the page with George Baker’s “Sad Sack” and Bill Mauldin’s “Willie and Joe.”

YANK made its first appearance on 17 June 1942. My father stayed with the publication and had a ball working and carousing (as well as raising GI morale) with his boyhood heroes - now peers as fellow YANK staffers - who he’d only previously known as from the pages of Life, Look and Colliers etc.

My dad stayed with YANK until the end of the war, upon which he returned to Wisconsin to marry my mother Lorraine, and conceive and raise my sister Debra - and me. He remained a commercial artist based in Racine and doing graphic design work for companies like Case Tractor, Pabst Brewing, SC Johnson & Company (along with and many, many others) - until his death in 1992.

He was a great guy – truly loved by all. And just think: Had it not been for his complete horror at being charged with “shit and puke” duty on the James Parker, Windy City Kitty would never have been born. And neither would my sister or myself either!

Cheers to Sgt Jack Crowe.


From his son, Christopher Crowe, Los Angeles, CA.