Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for July 15, 2024

Honestly, I think that’s a great title. But, of course, my first hitch in the military was as a battalion PAC clerk. :)

The good old company clerk…I don’t know nothin

I know what he’s referring to; as Company Clerk I had to type up the Morning Report everyday, but if you made a mistake you had to make the correction on all triplicate copies!!! A nightmare!!!

I thought Phil was supposed to be dying. Where did he get the strength to get out of bed and give those papers to Mark?

dunno, sometimes people who are dying go through a “rally” before they die?

Mark’s dad is Radar O’Reily?

The clerks still had to carry a rifle and fight.

No unpublished writer will ever miss the opportunity to be fawned over…

My Dad was a company clerk in a MASH unit attached to Patton’s Third Army. It didn’t prevent him from being shot at, straffed or ,more importantly, seeing what went on inside the camps when they liberated the Buchenwald complex. Unlike Phil, he never talked about it, let alone write a memoir.

As B Battery’s clerk (1963 into 1965), I personally stopped the Russians and East Germans from coming down the Fulda Gap with my Remington office typewriter.

It worked OK for Radar.

They also serve who sit and type.

Late in life, Lee Marvin regretted making THE DIRTY DOZEN. saying it trivialized WW 2(Marvin was a decorated vet).

Art Carney picked up shrapnel in his leg during The Battle of The Bulge and it was never removed.He developedthat “herky-jerky” style of his so he’d have an excuse to raise the leg off the ground(it hurt if he stood on it for too long)

Limited readership expected.

Form DD250 used to require (if I recall correctly) nineteen copies distributed among — what? — five different recipients. And that was just to ship something to Uncle.

My dad had a logistics job in WWII. He worked at a desk. He was stationed all over the South Pacific. In retrospect it was like a vacation with mountains of paperwork. In the ‘90s he was interviewed for some kind of oral history project although I don’t know what became of it. He remained friends with his best Army friend for the rest of their lives,