Spanking-of-the-Week

A recent cigaret advertisement showed a well-groomed soldier resting comfortably in a tropical setting, under the slogan, "Light Up and Relax." This ad and others like it last week were soundly thwacked in an editorial in the Down Under (Australian area) edition of Yank, the Army weekly. Drawled Yank:

". . . This advertising version of an American dogface sprawls comfortably against a clean green jungle background. Not a wisp of whisker mars his healthy smiling puss. There's a press in his pants. And for gosh sakes, his shoes are shined!

"Since the first Low Numbers were inducted, this Esquire GI has popped in & out of our leading magazines. Back in '41 he rode troop trains--in razor-creased wools and a Pershing cap! He later appeared in Guada, happy, smiling, clean as a boy scout poster. He arrived safely, and none the worse for wear, in North Africa. He showed up in New Guinea, a notoriously messy theater of war, and went so far as to sit near a very small puddle of water.

"Other than that he's seen no Horrors of War. Not him. He just lit up and relaxed. And his cigarets were always dry.

"Maybe he sells cigarets--back in Omaha. But he goes over like a lead balloon with the boys who have SEEN Guada, Buna and the north Tunisian coast. And a lot of guys who have been wearing the same socks for a month could cheerfully throttle the copywriters who created [him].

"It's time these 'Alice in Wonderland' admen learned, and told the cockeyed world . . . that war ... is being fought by guys who are dirty, with crawly beards and torn pants. Guys who are too hot or too cold, soaked to the skin or short of water, stinking with sweat, filthy with mud. . . . Guys who light up but seldom relax. . . ."

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