Kilroy is here.

Of all the graffiti created by mankind for centuries, perhaps the most touching is the inscription left by soldiers. Long before achaean set sail for Troy, military life was full of loneliness, inaction, anxiety, sudden intense drama and the real prospect of premature and sudden death. Perhaps it is because of a strong sense of impermanence, that is, recording graffiti, songs and pictures of troops entering and leaving the battlefield, or as Mr. Roberts said in the play, "from boring to boring, and then to boring"-the significance of this goes far beyond the handprints on the wet cement on the new sidewalk, the heart-shaped initials carved on the old trees, or the high school graduation information sprayed on the expressway overpass.

Military graffiti can be learned from fatalism to trauma to irony, from countless sad variants about "why me" to madness and noise in the unknown world. During World War I, British soldiers read the motto of German soldiers' belt buckles (God is with us) and wrote on the walls of their trenches: "We also have gloves." One of the most famous figures in World War II was a clown with a long nose. He peeped through the fence and said, "Kilroy is here." Almost everywhere American soldiers go, he appears. "In 2003, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History collected some examples of G.I. graffiti, which caused a special * * * sound. These are canvas paintings, words and graffiti, which were carved by soldiers and marines under the narrow hammock berth of a warship sailing from Oakland, California to Vietnam. The discovery of these fascinating clips records the experiences of those young soldiers, which is the unexpected result of another exploration. 1February, 997, Jack Fisk, the producer of The Thin Red Line, adapted from the novelist james jones's memories of Pacific bats during World War II, wanted to make a film that could accurately simulate military strength. Fisk consulted Art Berthelon, a Virginia military souvenir collector who has been a film and museum consultant for 30 years. He and Fisk decided that the best place to experience the troops of World War II was on a real ship: they went to a marine reserve on the James River in Virginia, where a ghostly fleet of sealed personnel carriers lay on the anchor, rusty and waiting to be dismantled. At 4 o'clock on a cold winter morning, wearing miners' helmets with lights, they walked into General Nelson M Walker, a 609-foot-long P-2 chariot, and retired at 1968. The Pacers are part of a huge fleet that transports 500,000 soldiers and marines to Vietnam.

When Fisk filmed the army barracks, Beltrone found that the canvas under the bunk was piled three stories high, and it was tilted 45 degrees in the storage position during the day, including pictures and words written by soldiers on the bunk below. "Everything was a little bit," bertram recalled, referring to obscenity, painting and even poetry. "He was fascinated by the manic mixture-"Bang, ""George Washington sleeps here "and" capitalist Yankee dog go home! " Berthelon served in the Marine Corps Reserve Force in the 1960s, but was not drafted during the Vietnam War. "I know I stumbled across a unique personal history," he said. When I spent those years in Long Island, these young people were preparing to go to war.

Berthelon thinks it is very important to salvage some canvases. Their message conveyed bravado and suppressed fear of the near future. (He pointed out that the 18-day trip to the Pacific made most soldiers happy because the transit time was counted as "at home". ) When Bertron and his wife and photographer Li visited the ship several times, they recorded these inscriptions on the canvas. (The complete story is described in their book "Vietnam War Graffiti: A Forgotten Soldier's Message". )