Those lyrics, unmistakably written by Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel), grace The Infantry Blues (1943), one of about two dozen "Private Snafu" cartoons made by Warner Bros. during World War II. The federal government had the Hollywood studios produce hundreds of animated and live-action shorts during the war, including training and educational films as well as escapist entertainment for the troops. The Pvt. Snafu series was created by Warner Brothers animation and distributed exclusively to military installations by the U.S. Signal Corps, as part of the biweekly "Army-Navy Screen Magazine" newsreel. A Snafu cartoon would be inserted into the newsreel about once a month.
They were always under five minutes long, as opposed to the standard cartoon length of about seven minutes, and they were all made in black-and-white. But they were created by the same talents behind Bugs, Daffy, Porky and the rest of the beloved Warner cartoon stable. Chuck Jones supervised the Snafu series and directed about half of them; Fritz Freleng and Frank Tashlin handled the rest. Almost all were written (or co-written) by Dr. Seuss, and all were voiced by Mel Blanc. The idea behind the series was to reinforce soldiers' training, demonstrate to them the necessity of the tedious work they often had to do, and educate them about various aspects of military life, from sanitary habits to the importance of secrecy. This was done through the character of Pvt. Snafu (a military acronym for "situation normal: all f----d up"), who tended to complain, shirk his duties, and do just about everything wrong. As he learns his lessons, so do those watching, all in the context of very funny comedy. Several of these cartoons also have risqué humor, thanks to not being subject to the Hollywood production code.
The Infantry Blues finds Snafu as an infantryman complaining about the hardships of being a foot soldier. As he trudges endlessly across the terrain, he comes upon a sign: "Rest Room 18,000 miles." That's the last straw, enough for him to start rhapsodizing about how much cushier the other branches of the military must be. A Technical Fairy First Class then appears, who magically transports Snafu into a tank, then a ship, and then a bomber, to teach him that the tank corps, the navy and the air corps all present their own challenges and discomforts.
By Jeremy Arnold
SOURCES:
Michael S. Shull and David E. Wilt, Doing Their Bit: Wartime American Animated Short Films 1939-1945
Ethan de Seife, Tashlinesque: The Hollywood Comedies of Frank Tashlin
