Cleaning Mess Gear (1945) User Reviews

Not Many Enemas In Cartoons

[boblipton · 6/10 · 23 May 2023]

Private McGillicuddy has learned his lesson about keeping his mess gear clean and disinfected. Here's how it happened.

This series of "Commandments for Health" cartoons was commissioned by the US Navy for showing to Marines, attending the rapid redeployment from Europe to the Pacific after VE Day. They seem to have been produced rapidly. So they were not as polished as the Army's Private Snafu cartoons, but they do have the advantage of Mel Blanc doing the narration in a contemptuous tone of voice.

This is one of the better of them, with a rather rough-and-ready style of gags about the consequences of not keeping your mess kit clean.

Good old Private McGilicuddy

[dtucker86 · 10/10 · 21 September 2023]

They say that cleanliness is next to Godliness especially if you are a Soldier in the field during a combat operation. In this short we see our favorite screw up good old Private McGillicuddy as he learns a painful lesson about cleaning his mess gear (hint you don't lick it). There is the usual imagainative animation where they show the errant soldier how quickly germs can multiply and turn his guts into something like a wet knotted rope. There is nightmare scene of him in the hospital being forced to drink a huge bottle of castor oil and then being given a fifty gallon enema. In the end he learns his lesson and faithfully sterilizes his mess gear.