KILROY WAS HERE

As a military kid raised in the Post-WWII milieu, one of the images that sticks in my mind is that of the ubiquitous Kilroy, that simplistic long-nosed character peeking over a fence on which the legend "Kilroy Was Here" was scribbled.

It was an image that appeared countless thousands of times during the course of the war; it showed up in the oddest places and in the oddest ways. Bomber crews often chalked the image on five-hundred-pound bombs en route to their targets, both in Europe and the Pacific, as what one might term a "benediction." Soldiers, sailors and airmen scratched it on the walls of their barracks, in the latrines of bars and restaurants and in the paint of miltiary aircraft and vehicles. It also showed up in places too delicate to mention from London to Berlin and from Hawaii to Japan.

It's odd how something like this can take on dimensions never dreamed of. During WWII it became a huge morale-boosting image long before the terms "imaging" and "demographics" were adopted by the advertising and marketing community.

For many years, even the official United States Government hadn't a clue as to the Kilroy origins. Typically, a blanket denial was issued when the subject arose, stating that after searching millions of files, "...no person named Kilroy ever existed."

Now, as Paul Harvey was fond of saying, here is "...the rest of the story."

In the early days of the war, volunteers were being sought from the ranks of the SeaBees and the Navy at large for what was then a "hush-hush" organization called "UDT," which stood for Underwater Demolition Teams.

The training was rigorous; only about twenty percent of the entrants made it through the full course, but these hardy souls set the standard for what would eventually become the Navy's Seals - the heroic "frogmen" of my youth.

It seems a couple of swabs named Red Schottel and Bob Deets were sitting in a bar one night, sharing a pitcher of beer and grousing about the unwanted attention they'd been getting from a particularly hard-nosed Marine Sergeant named Roy Shodee. As they shuttled between their version of a training table and the latrine, the topic became more heated.

Shodee, one of the UDT instructors, had a nasty habit of popping up from behind one of the walls on the obstacle course and coming down hard on any shirkers. Those he thought were slacking were tasked with extra and often onerous busywork.

Shodee was rather inventive when it came to disciplinary

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