G.I.s waiting to advance against the Japanese on the island of Vella Lavella in the Southwest Pacific, 13 September 1943
6 December 2023
A G.I. is an American soldier, and G.I. is used as an adjective denoting things related to the U.S. military. The term came into its own during World War II, but its origins go back somewhat further.
G.I. started out as a U.S. military abbreviation for galvanized iron. A War Department list of supplies from 1909 lists G.I. as a type of pipe. And an operations order for a 1913 training exercise by the Nebraska National Guard lists “Three Pails G.I.” as items to be loaded onto a supply wagon.
And during World War I, artillery shells and bombs were called G.I. cans by American soldiers. A poem by Albert J. Cook published in 1919 includes these lines:
There’s about two million fellows and there’s some of them who lie
Where eighty-eights and G.I.’s gently drop;
Where the trucks and trains are jamming and the colonel he is damning
Half of the earth and in particular the Service of Supply.
And by World War I that G.I. was informally applied to all sorts of items, from clothing to weapons. Most likely, soldiers had seen G.I., referring to galvanized iron on various supply inventories and reinterpreted it to mean Government Issue. The December 1918 unit newsletter of Ambulance Company 33, jocularly titled La Trine Rumor, contains a cartoon of Santa Claus delivering a bag of goodies to the company with the caption “A G.I. Christmas.”
The term continued to be used in soldier slang during the interwar years. Ray Hoyt’s 1935 account of life in the Civilian Conservation Corps, a Depression-era work-relief program that was managed by the U.S. Army includes a reference to G.I. blankets:
No man of the million who have been in the C.C.C. will forget his first days in “conditioning” camp. Memories of the “needle,” or his “ankle chokers,” or his first “snipe” hunt will stay with him always. He will never forget the first time he tried to balance a mess kit full of food, his first night on woolen G.I. blankets, nor his first contact with an Army sergeant.
And it is in 1939 that we first see a published source use G.I. to refer to a soldier. The 1939 edition of Bugle Notes, a handbook for cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point contains a glossary with an entry that reads: “G.I., n. An enlisted man.”
But it was World War II that made the obscure U.S. Army slang term into a household word. The 1942 War Dictionary has this entry for the term that attests to the ubiquity of the term:
G.I. (abbrv.), Government Issue, said for anything and everything in food, clothing and equipment issued to the army: G.I. soap, G.I. ash cans, G.I. buckets. However, “G.I. ash cans” may also mean heavy artillery shells. “G.I. hop” stands for a government-sponsored dance for soldiers, while “G.I. girls” are the girls brought by official chaperons to such dances.
And the inaugural, 17 June 1942 issue of Yank magazine, a publication by the U.S. Army for soldiers serving around the world, on 17 June 1942 contains multiple uses of G.I., such as this one:
The inaugural “G.I. Joe” cartoon by David Breger
Sixty-cent cables and microfilm mail are now available to American expeditionary forces.
A list of 103 fixed-test phrases, covering practically every situation in the life of a G.I., have been written. The sender may incorporate up to three of these texts in a cable or radiogram. Cost of the entire message will be 60 cents plus Federal tax, including address and signature. The ordinary cable rate is 20 to 40 cents a word.
G.I. Joe is another term used to refer to a generic American soldier. Green’s Dictionary of Slang has a citation of the term from 1935, but I have been unable to verify it, and the snippet is too short to determine its context. But G.I. Joe became popular through its use as a title of a cartoon series whose main character was a soldier. The cartoon, by David Breger, began publication in that same issue of Yank magazine on 17 June 1942.
The G.I. Joe toy debuted in 1964.
Sources:
Breger, David. “G.I. Joe” (cartoon). Yank, 17 June 1942, 24. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
“Cable Home at 60¢ Per.” Yank, 17 June 1942, 3/4. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Cook, Albert J. “There’s About Two Million Fellows.” In Paul S. Bliss. Victory: History of the 805th Pioneer Infantry. St. Paul, MN: 1919, 220–21 at 221. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., s.v. GI, adj.
Hoyt, Ray. We Can Take It. New York: American Book Company, 1935, 51. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
La Trine Rumor, December 1818. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Lighter, J. E. Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, vol. 1 of 2. New York: Random House, 1994, 888–89, s.v. GI, n., GI, adj.
Ottosen, P. H. Trench Artillery A.E.F. Boston: Lothrop, Lee, & Shepard, 1931, between 240–241. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. G.I., n., G.I. Joe, n. [Note: the 2023 update to the OED has a glitch in this entry. Section C.1. in the old version, compounds formed from G.I., have been orphaned in a separate entry that does not appear in search results. There is a link to the compounds in the main entry.]
Parry, Louise G. The War Dictionary. Chicago: Consolidated Book Publishers, 1942, s.v. G.I. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Quartermaster-General, War Department. List of Class A Supplies. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1909, 54. Hathi Trust Digital Archive.
State of Nebraska Adjutant General’s Office. “BULLETIN No. 2. Plans and Regulations for Maneuvers of Nebraska National Guard August 11–20 Inclusive.” Lincoln, NE: 19 May 1913. HathiTrust Digital Archive. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112112096943&seq=6
Image credits. Vella Lavella photo: US Army Signal Corps Photo, 1943. Public domain image. G.I. Joe cartoon: David Breger, 1942. Public domain image.