Gags for Soldiers

Last week the 38th ("Cyclone") Division moved out of the Louisiana maneuver area and headed back to its permanent quarters in Florida, and the most irreverent venture in military journalism swerved back into something approaching orthodox reporting. But the editors of the Cydoner could look fondly back on three months of unbridled gaggery.

The eleven numbers of the Cydoner reflected the pent-up feelings of its sergeant editors.* Its masthead proclaimed that it had "no mission, no policy ... no tactical news of maneuvers and any news about anything else is guaranteed to be strictly unreliable." But the Cydoner chronicled the plaintive tale of Private Kountze, who stumbled on what he thought was a U.S.O. house. He wondered how the "senior hostess" had 15 flimsy-gowned daughters all approximately the same age. Not until the police raided did Private Kountze know.

The Cydoner published a lush collection of pin-up girls each week--and kidded the scanty pants off them. A movie starlet with a guitar was merely "what you are not likely to find in the South Sea Islands." Another leggy gal "just happened to fit in this space." Readers were warned of a classy near-nude: "This girl can take care of her own tactical situation."

No sacred cows obstructed the editors' free range. The Cydoner's Colonel Blimp was one General Fivestars, whose troops were always getting lost. Cydoner's enlisted men did not hesitate to refer to "laws, as amended by Congress to make officers gentlemen."

The cynical Cydoner editors had the satisfaction of knowing that half the division sent the paper home.

* The staff included Tipton Blish, Yale graduate (1927) and onetime man about Manhattan, Nathan Kaplan from the Bloomington (Ind.) Evening World, Photographer Edward Andros, who used to run a portrait studio in Mishawaka, Ind., and Private Grover Page Jr., son of the Louisville Courier-Journal's famed cartoonist. Public Relations Lieut. Peyton Hoge conceived the paper's slant and the division commander, Major General H. L. C. Jones., tolerated it.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.