① Millions of Americans and foreigners see G.I. Joe as a mindless war toy, the symbol of American military adventurism, but that’s not how it used to be. To the men and women who ____1____ in World War Ⅱ and the people they liberated, the G.I. was the ____2____ man grown into hero, the poor farm kid torn away from his
② home, the guy who ____3____ all the burdens of battle, who slept in cold foxholes, who went without the ____4____ of food and shelter, who stuck it out and drove back the Nazi reign of murder. This was not a volunteer soldier, not someone well paid, ____5____ an average guy, up ____6____ the best trained, best equipped, fiercest, most brutal enemies seen in centuries.
③ His name isn’t much. G.I. is just a military abbreviation ____7____ Government Issue, and it was on all of the articles ____8____ to soldiers. And Joe? A common name for a guy who never ____9____ it to the top. Joe Blow, Joe Palooka, Joe Magrac... a working class name. The United States has ____10____ had a president or vice-president or secretary of state Joe.
④ G.I. Joe had a ____11____ career fighting German, Japanese, and Korean troops. He appears as a character, or a ____12____ of American personalities, in the 1945 movie The Story of G.I. Joe, based on the last days of war correspondent Ernie Pyle. Some of the soldiers Pyle ____13____ portrayed themselves in the film. Pyle was famous for covering the ____14____ side of the war, writing about the dirt-snow-and-mud soldiers, not how many miles were ____15____ or what towns were captured or liberated. His reports ____16____ the “Willie” cartoons of famed Stars and Stripes artist Bill Maulden. Boh men ____17____ the dirt and exhaustion of war, the ____18____ of civilization that the soldiers shared with each other and the civilians: coffee, tobacco, whiskey, shelter, sleep. ____19____ Egypt, France, and a dozen more countries, G.I. Joe was any American soldier, ____20____ the most important person in their lives.
