He spotted the model, 16-year-old Robert Otis Buck, at a square dance on the West Arlington village green. Willie is not a soldier. He works in a sawmill near Mr. Rockwell’s Vermont home.

Buck entered the Navy as apprentice seaman at the Naval Training Station at Sampson, New York. The following day the Rockwell studio at Arlington burned and all [of Rockwell’s sketches of Buck] were destroyed. The Navy, with the generous realization that life must go on for Pvt. Willie Gillis, lent him back to Mr. Rockwell long enough for the artist to make new sketches.

In all, Buck/Gillis appeared on 11 Post covers. The last one showed him as a young man, discharged from the Army, studying at college.

The American soldier was now the American scholar, one of 7.8 million Americans taking advantage of the G.I. Bill.