He returned to Chicago and the sausage stockyard, rising to the position of office manager of his father's firm, where he devised the company slogan, "Our Wurst Is the Best".

[2] In 1937, after receiving a $30 check from The Saturday Evening Post, Breger arrived in New York and began freelancing to Collier's, Parade, This Week, Esquire, Click and The New Yorker.

Early in 1941, he was drafted into the United States Army and sent to Camp Livingston in Louisiana, where he repaired trucks.

The Saturday Evening Post, under the heading Private Breger, began publishing these cartoons as a series starting August 30, 1941.

[1][2] The Army became aware of his talent and transferred him to the Special Services Division in New York, where he married Brooklyn-born art agent Dorathy Lewis on January 9, 1942.

[2][4] Yank wanted Breger to do cartoons like those in The Saturday Evening Post, but the editors asked him to devise a new title.

That summer, Breger arrived in the UK in 1942 as one of the first two Yank correspondents, covering the American military in England as a photo-journalist, while also producing his weekly G.I.

")[5] In 1942, Breger illustrated the sheet music for Irving Berlin's "I Left My Heart at the Stage Door Canteen".

[7] The character remained a private throughout World War II, while Breger himself was promoted through the ranks to corporal, sergeant and eventually lieutenant.

[8] Recurring themes in the strips and panels included jail, weddings and Breger employed as a bank teller.

Mister Breger also received comic book reprints in The Katzenjammer Kids (1947), Popeye (1967), Beetle Bailey (1969) and Flint Comix and Entertainment (2009–10).

In But That's Unprintable (1955) Breger wrote about newspaper and magazine taboos and illustrated his text with 135 unpublished cartoons by leading cartoonists, including Bo Brown, Milton Caniff, Irwin Caplan, Eric Ericson, Stan Fine, Rube Goldberg, Leo Garel, Don Flowers, Phil Interlandi, Reamer Keller, Fred Lundy, Jack Markow, Charles E. Martin, Fred Neher, Russell Patterson, Mort Walker and George Wolfe.

The material is arranged in such chapters as bodily functions, clothing, death, mental illness, sex and words.