Willie Gillis & Norman Rockwell.

I was looking at Norman Rockwell's wonderful illustrations for the Saturday Evening Post. The ones that focused to the fictional US soldier Willie Gillis.
While I was looking I was impressed by the level of detail Rockwell had gone into to tell his story. So I wondered if there was any indication from the pictures, as to which unit the fictional Gillis was supposed to have served in, or was he just meant to represent all soldiers.

So far I have deducted that he is possibly a rifleman in the infantry, who served in Africa & Europe & became a sergeant (First/Staff?). If anyone else wants to take a crack at it please do, it's quite fun.

http://www.buzzfeed....rockwe?s=mobile

This is a post about the man Rockwell based Gillis on.
http://www.saturdaye...lie-gillis.html
Personally I think his illustrations are marvellous.

This is the illustration of Gillis in a convoy that never made the cover.
https://m.flickr.com/#/photos/gandalfsgallery/13925107479/

Here is my progress so far with the help of ww2talk, and my introduction to you guys here.
http://ww2talk.com/forums/topic/55976-willie-gillis-norman-rockwell/

Josh.

 

I concur with Slip's response over on ww2talk. However, I would add one small correction, there is one painting that shows his Collar disc - "Willie Gillis - In Church". However, I have not been able to find a detailed photo of it on line...one of the better ones.


From what detail that can be seen, it does not appear to be an infantry one(crossed rifles).

To me it appears to be a "castle", which would be the Corps of Engineers.



This would fit with the ASF patch in the college painting, as both the Service Forces, and Ground Forces had Engineers.

 

Thanks Slip, glad to be here.

Takao. Thanks for the input, I thought I saw a castle there too! Excellent.

So did ASF have its own regiments and stuff?

Josh.

 

For the CBI, as per "Willie Travels"(June 26, 1943), you can start here:
http://www.cbi-history.com/part_iv_eng.html#13
Not sure which are Service and which are Ground though.

 

Great list thanks. Shame it doesn't specify which branch they were affiliated with but it's a good place to start.

I saw that there was four units (five counting a black outfit) that had N.Africa listed under location, that ties with the "Travel" image, but they were all aviation, perhaps the detail isn't enough to rule that out though, however none of them served in Europe, which given Gillis' uniform in the unused "convoy" cover he might have served in (maybe he transferred out).
I guess location is for where they were stationed?

Josh.