Us Army Air Forces Dog Faces T-Shirt

This t-shirt is a reproduction of a model that existed during World War II

The term "dogface" to describe an American soldier appeared in print at least as early as 1935.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."

During World War II, the nickname came to be seen as a self-appointed term of endearment for soldiers,

Up Front, a cartoon drawn by Bill Mauldin that featured everyday infantrymen Willie and Joe, helped popularize the term "dogface." The cartoon ran from 1940 to 1943 in the 45th Division News, and in Stars and Stripes until 1948.

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."