Tanks for the Memories
Looking back to many NCS cartoonists tours with the USO, through sketches and photos.
Back in 1943, a group of famous cartoonists, including Gus Edson, Otto Soglow, Clarence D. Russell and Bob Dunn among others, began visiting the troops overseas to do ‘Chalk Talks’ on military bases with the USO, with the goal to raise wartime morale, and probably to a lesser extent, get out of the studio.
Those 'Chalk Talks’ (which are explained nicely here) planted the seeds for what would eventually become the National Cartoonists Society. In 1946, the newly formed NCS elected as it’s inaugural president Rube Goldberg, Russell Patterson as VP, Clarence D.Russell, secretary and Milton Caniff, treasurer. The NCS is still going strong today, and is still involved with morale raising missions to service men & women and various remote locations around the world.
After WWII, these NCS/USO tours continued with some regularity for a number of years, but I’m told the trips started to become less and less frequent for whatever reason around the time of the Vietnam war. (If I have any of this timeline wrong, I’ll edit this post with an amendment and give credit to whoever sets me straight. Hop to it, brainiacs!)
Then, in the early 2000s, NCS member, Navy Captain, cartoonist for The Navy Times and all around swell guy Jeff Bacon raised his hand at the annual NCS business meeting and asked President Tom Richmond why the NCS wasn’t doing this USO trips anymore. There was no definitive answer, so Jeff humbly offered to take the helm and work to get them going again. He was successful, and from then on (until the pandemic, anyway), in partnership with the USO, the NCS had a good long string of successful cartoonist tours of military bases, hospitals and war zones all over the globe.
You learn something new every day!
I was lucky enough to be able to tag along on a number of these trips. Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkey, Germany, even to Eastern Africa, these trips were some of the highlights of my career.
While on these trips, I often tried to keep some sort of sketchbook record of the goings on. I was always good at the beginning of any trip… but… it’s really hot over there!
Yes, there’s stories behind most of these. The funniest involves that drawing of the attack dog about to tear fellow cartoonist Dave Mowder to shreds. A volunteer was requested by the handlers to help demonstrate the skill, agility precision of these dogs. I leaned over and told Dave I’d volunteer if he would. He took me up on it instantly. Dave raised his hand, got suited up in all that protective garb, and proceeded to get taken down and absolutely destroyed by this trained military dog.
When he got up & composed himself, we were told we had to be elsewhere in 5 minutes and there wasn’t time for another demonstration. Sorry Dave!
Update: Post pandemic, we’re staring to slowly get these things going again, though I’m not sure how active I’ll be going forward. I’ve done quite a few of these jaunts around the world, and I’m sure there’s other (younger!) cartoonists who’d jump at the opportunity.
But, they’re life changing, for sure, and I’m very much a different person than I was before I started these things. After a visit to military hospital, for example, meeting and talking to soldiers and their families whose lives are forever altered by their time on the battlefield, be it physically, mentally or both, all of a sudden any problems I had or have get put in a very different perspective.
Truth be told, I tend to think I/we get more out of these trips than the people whose morale we’re supposed to be uplifting. Who knows.