The American Infantryman has been given nicknames ever since the first citizen-soldiers picked up their muskets in defense of their homes and hearths from the tyranny of British rule. Some are instantly understood: “Minutemen” could be ready on a moment’s notice, while “legs” and groundpounders” referred to the troopers’ primary mode of movement.
But other names have more oblique origins. Take “G.I.,” for instance. Although its usage as a nickname for Infantrymen goes back to World War I, the initials “GI” were originally an informal abbreviation for “galvanized iron” used in Army inventory records, which explains why German artillery shells were nicknamed “G.I. Cans” during that war. It was also during World War I that “G.I.” began to be associated with “government issue” and used as an adjective to indicate something was Army-related. In 1935,
Our Army magazine coined the phrase “G.I. Joe” as a blanket reference to enlisted Soldiers, and seven years later the Army-published magazine
Yank launched a comic strip titled “G.I. Joe.”
Of course, it’s not only Army personnel that receive “government issue” supplies, and an argument could be made the term “G.I.” applies to any member of the military. But no less of a source than General Dwight Eisenhower seemed to think it referred specifically to Army Soldiers. In a May, 1945 Universal Studios newsreel titled
Funeral Pyres Of Nazidom, “Ike” identifies G.I. Joe as the Army Infantryman, remarking that the “truly heroic figure of this war...is G.I. Joe and his counterpart in the air, the Navy, and the Merchant Marine of every one of the United Nations.”
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