BOB "HONORARY VETERAN" HOPE

______In World War II American men and women selflessly put on uniforms in order to fight for freedom around the world. American soldiers could be found from the deserts of North Africa to the farmlands of England, from central China to Pacific island outposts, from the Soviet frontier in Iran to the vast oceans of the world... men and women put their lives on hold to end the threat posed by fascism. Many of them never returned to take up those lives again.
______Americans who had never been outside their hometown or their state soon found themselves in strange, unfamiliar lands. Mail from home helped to heal homesickness (or at least hold it at bay) but the G.I.s often needed something to raise their spirits.
______That's when Bob Hope first took to the stage. No stranger to showbiz (Bob had been in vaudeville, Broadway, movies, and radio) he began doing special shows for the troops on behalf of the United Services Organization in 1941, months before America entered the War. Once Pearl Harbor was bombed Bob Hope applied for, and got, permission to travel overseas to perform for soldiers in combat zones.
______He made the troops laugh in Alaska, England, North Africa, Sicily, Iceland, Hawaii, the islands of the South Pacific, France, and, finally, Germany. He brought with him singers, musicians and (of course) pretty girls. As Bob Hope liked to say "I just wanted to remind you boys what you're fighting for."
______But Bob didn't let it end there. He also "served" in Berlin during the Airlift, went to Korea before Ike did and brought Marylin Monroe with him, and did "tours" in Vietnam. Vietnam was a particularly hard one to do as it became unfashionable in Hollywood to support the troops; Jane Fonda, for instance, would rather entertain the Viet Cong than a G.I. Bob Hope was always there with a joke, wearing outlandish "uniforms" which became his trademark.
______But it wasn't just combat zones. In the fifties and sixties Bob Hope did a show every year even when there WASN'T a war going on. He went to isolated outposts in Alaska, Greenland, Gitmo, Panama, Turkey, Guam, Diego Garcia and Japan, among others spots. Some of the jokes and self-deprecating humor might be corny at times, but it gave soldiers a feeling that they were not forgotten. By the 1970s some of the soldiers had fathers who had seen Bob Hope during World War II. By the 1980s Bob Hope was entertaining his third generation of servicemen.
______Bob Hope did some tours on U.S. Navy vessels in the Middle East in the 1980s (and visited the Marines in Beirut during one short trip) and did his last show in in Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Shield. The show wasn't the same anymore, as the scantily-clad girls had to be left behind due to Moslem sensibilities ("I was a little miffed... they said we couldn't bring entertainers but they let ME in.").
______In 1997 Bob Hope was made an Honorary Veteran by act of Congress, the only person to ever have that title. Mr. Hope said that it was the greatest honor he could be given, to be numbered among the servicemen and women he had entertained. Bob Hope died in July 2003 less than two months after his 100th birthday. A USO award, countless buildings and a naval vessel have been named after him. He will always be remembered.

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