Are You Like Benny? (1942), poster No. 8 on Benny the Bungler

Are You Like Benny? Take Care of Your Truck is a 1942 two-panel sheet from Headquarters, Antiaircraft Artillery Command, Eastern Defense Command. It is No. 8 in a series on "Benny the Bungler," with a cartoon soldier on a dented, leaking truck and a typeset story beside it (NAID 513954).

What the sheet prints

The sheet has two panels. On the right, on a red burst, a cartoon soldier smokes on the dented fender of a leaking truck, beside a well-kept truck. On the left is a typeset story with cartoons. The poster panel is short and direct.

ARE YOU LIKE

Benny?

TAKE CARE OF

YOUR TRUCK

BE A CREDIT TO

AMERICA'S

ALERTMEN!

[imprint:] 5-11-42

THIS IS NO.8 IN A SERIES OF POSTERS ON THE WRONG-DOINGS OF "BENNY THE BUNGLER". DON'T BE LIKE HIM!

[...]

The main trouble with Benny is he just doesn't care."

[...]

You asked for it, now do the job RIGHT for a change. No cowboying, no whistling at girls, and none of the other tricks you've shown before. And keep that truck in good shape."

Who made it

The imprint says the sheet was produced by Headquarters, Antiaircraft Artillery Command, Eastern Defense Command, over the name of Sanderford Jarman, Major General, U.S. Army, commanding. The date printed on the sheet is 5-11-42. The archive's audience field reads the Army's own forces, and its purpose field reads mobilizing or securing compliance. The National Archives holds it with the World War II posters.

How to read it

The archive tags name-calling and plain folks, and names the tell: a mocked bungler set beside a model driver. Benny is a soldier the reader is meant to laugh at and not become. The story gives him a battery commander, a first sergeant, a second chance and a lapse. In the transcribed part he splashes passing cars, sneaks through caution signals, keeps to about 40 miles an hour in town, and comes back with fenders already dented from earlier "meetings" with the garage.

The sheet works by ridicule, aimed inward. It is the command speaking to its own men, under the commanding general's name, about the care of its trucks. That is a fair use of a commander's voice. It names no enemy and uses no slur. The point is care of equipment, and the joke carries it.

The Ordnance Department's Joe Dope sheet, drawn by Will Eisner the same year, teaches rifle care with the same device: a fool the reader should not copy. The Roosevelt administration essay sorts the period's posters by what they asked.