Warriors in Greasepaint
Jennifer Wilding

One of the things that keeps an army fighting is morale. Thrown into bewildering and often horrible circumstances soldiers can become depressed and lose the will to live, much less fight. Keeping spirits and esprit de corps high is a perpetual difficulty. Demoralized and dispirited troops simply do not perform well. It is necessary to 'show them what they are fighting for'.

General George Marshall was well aware of this problem. In 1940, even before the entry of America into the Second World War, he proposed an organization to enhance the morale and quality of life for servicemen and their families and on February 4, 1941, the United Service Organization For National Defense, Inc. was chartered. The name was eventually changed to the now familiar United Service Organizations, Inc. (USO). It was a civilian, nonprofit organization which included representatives from the Salvation Army, the YMCA, the YWCA, National Jewish Welfare Board and the National Catholic Community Service. The Travelers Aid Association of America joined about a month later.

Despite its Congressional Charter the USO was not a government agency. It was, and still is, a registered charity, run largely by volunteers with the President of the United States serving as its honorary chairman.

The USO provided a number of services to members of the armed forces and their families. There were social clubs, movies, dances, message services, spiritual counsel and even daycare centers for the children of working women whose husbands were overseas. Some USO centers catered only to women in uniform. The USO facilities often provided the only taste of home for soldiers during the entire course of the war.

The most famous of these facilities, aside from free coffee and donuts, were undoubtedly the camp shows. These shows took place anywhere one might find soldiers. No audience was too small, no venue unsuitable. It was not unusual for two or three soldiers to view a performance put on in the back of a pickup truck by a single entertainer. Many of the shows, of course, took place at military bases in the United States but as the war dragged on and more territory was gained by the Allies the USO moved into actual combat areas. Many times performers came under fire, thirty-seven died, some killed in action.

The USO was organized into four main circuits. The Victory Circuit brought fully staged Broadway shows to bases in the continental US that boasted large enough facilities, the Blue Circuit brought vaudeville type shows to smaller bases with fewer men and less spacious facilities, the Hospital circuit provided just what its name implies and the Foxhole Circuit played to front-line bases. Entertainers were not necessarily top name Hollywood, although an astonishingly large number of big stars worked the USO tours. Some of the volunteers were not even entertainers in the usual sense, artists would draw portraits of soldiers, producers, directors and technical support workers toured with the stars. Nor was being a big name star a guarantee of working the more plush venues. Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Marlene Dietrich and the Andrews Sisters all worked the Foxhole Circuit, alongside their lesser known contemporaries. The warriors in greasepaint worked hard. Some did as many as thirteen shows a day, from pickup trucks, barges, in gun emplacements and sitting under trees. The Andrew Sisters even did a show on a ship that was pulling out of harbor, being brought to shore as the ship moved out into the sea.

Sometimes Hollywood stars contributed to the war effort in other ways. Jimmy Stewart, Douglas Fairbanks, Clark Gable and others served in the armed forces, some with great distinction. Gable made training films as well as flying combat missions. The Victory Train made a tour of five thousand venues in over three hundred cities to sell War Bonds. Seven troupes of Hollywood stars raised over a billion dollars.

Morale, and the work the USO was doing, were considered to be so vital to the war effort that some stars were blocked from joining active service by direct presidential order.

Not all servicemen were accessible to live performers. The War Department created the Armed Forces Radio Service, shows were broadcast on short-wave radio or recorded live and shipped to various broadcast locations. These shows were exclusive to the armed forces, only one, the Christmas Eve show of 1942, was ever a public broadcast. Most of the shows were done by request. Men would write in to request certain songs or performers, personal messages would sometimes be included and the humor had a distinctly military bent. KP and food were popular targets, the bravest man in the army was defined as the mess cook who actually ate his own food. Bob Hope was fond of targeting the commanding officer of a camp, a ploy which invariably brought roars of laughter.

Bob Hope is probably the best known USO performer of all time. His contribution to the war ranged from the Victory Train to Broadway style shows in the Theater District of London but it is for his innumerable Camp Shows that he is best known and loved. These took place literally all over the world, starting out in Quonset huts in Alaska and coming under fire in Algiers. Hope recounts that he found the hospital visits the most difficult of all, but he still made the wounded men laugh.

By June, 1943 the USO boasted 739,000 volunteers, in 1944 it ran over three thousand recreational facilities. As the war ended and the process of demobilization began it extended nearly seventy thousand cases of travelers aid to the men and women who were returning home to civilian life.

In 1948 even the lengthy process of demobilization was coming to an end. The USO was dissolved. Its story, however, does not end there. With the outbreak of the Korean War the USO was revived, reorganized and expanded. It is now an integral part of American military life, still a voluntary organization, and still vital.