Dogface (military)

[5][6] Contemporaneous newspapers accounted for the nickname by explaining that soldiers "wear dog-tags, sleep in pup tents, and are always growling about something" and "the army is a dog's life...and when they want us, they whistle for us.

"[7][8] Phillip Levesque, a veteran of the U.S. 89th Infantry Division in World War II, wrote that "we were filthy, cold and wet as a duck hunting dog and we were ordered around sternly and loudly like a half-trained dog.

"[9] During World War II, the nickname came to be seen as a self-appointed term of endearment for soldiers,[10] but as an insult if used by others, such as United States Marine Corps personnel.

[6][11][12][13] Up Front, a cartoon drawn by Bill Mauldin that featured everyday infantrymen Willie and Joe, helped popularize the term "dogface.

[15] In 1942, Bert Gold and Ken Hart, two members of the United States Army Air Forces, published a song called "The Dogface Soldier," which one newspaper called an "authentic foxhole folksong.