Dave Breger - WWII

WWII

In 1937, after receiving a $30 check from The Saturday Evening Post, Breger arrived in New York and began freelancing to Collier's, Parade, This Week, Esquire, Click and The New Yorker. Early in 1941, he was drafted into the United States Army and sent to Camp Livingston in Louisiana, where he repaired trucks. He drew at night in the bakery or while sitting in a truck with netting overhead to keep the bugs away. The Saturday Evening Post, under the heading Private Breger, began publishing these cartoons as a series starting August 30, 1941.

The Army became aware of his talent and transferred him to the Special Services Division in New York, where he married Brooklyn-born art agent Dorathy Lewis on January 9, 1942. In the early spring of 1942, he was assigned to the New York staff of Yank, the Army Weekly.

Yank wanted Breger to do cartoons like those in The Saturday Evening Post, but the editors asked him to devise a new title. He came up with the title G.I. Joe from the military term "Government Issue", and the character's full name was Joe Trooper. His G.I. Joe cartoon series began in the first issue of Yank (June 17, 1942). That summer, Breger arrived in the UK in 1942 as one of the first two Yank correspondents, covering the American military in England as a photo-journalist, while also producing his weekly G.I. Joe cartoon for Yank.

King Features Syndicate took an interest and signed Breger on to do a Private Breger (aka Private Breger Abroad) daily panel for domestic distribution. It was launched October 19, 1942 and continued until October 13, 1945.

He soon became one of the most famous and widely read of the WWII cartoonists, and the term "G.I. Joe" was adopted first by soldiers and then the homefront as the popular term for the American foot soldier. (Hasbro's G.I. Joe is a different character, developed by Larry Hama and trademarked as "G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero.") In 1942, Breger illustrated the sheet music for Irving Berlin's "I Left My Heart at the Stage Door Canteen".