WOODCOCK-ROBERT

Excerpts from article in “NAVY MEDICINE” published by BUMED, issue of Nov/Dec 2008:

WOODY’S  WORLD

THE  NAVY’S  CORPSMAN  ARTIST

Pharmacist’s Mate Second Class Robert G. “Woody” Woodcock was not your typical World War II hospital corpsman.  Despite his rating, he was not a medical man but a talented cartoonist and illustrator who spent the war elevating the spirits of his colleagues with Navy themed comic strips.  The Seattle-born and bred Woodcock graduated from high school in 1938 and the Burnley School of Art (now the Seattle Institute of Art) in 1940. 

After a job as an illustrator for a local department store he received his draft notice, and hoping to an aviation machinist’s mate, he succeeded in joining the Navy.  In 1942, while at basic training in San Diego, he received two surprises that would ultimately shape his military career.  First, he was selected to attend hospital corps school and second, he won first prize in a San Diego area military art competition.  Woodcock struggled through corps school and did not think he could graduate.  But Woody offered more to the Medical Department than just medical prowess.  The Navy had a variety of uses for someone with artistic abilities.  So, after a short stay at Naval Hospital Bremerton, he was transferred to Bethesda and the Medical Illustrator School where he spent 18-months honing his skills.  Woodcock was next ordered to Naval Hospital Aiea Heights, Hawaii.  There he developed a weekly comic strip called “Foxhole” for the hospital’s newsletter.  The character of the strip was a somewhat dim-witted, but well-meaning sailor who never failed at finding trouble.  In a “biographical study” of his title character, Woodcock wrote that “Foxhole” grew up in Podunk and was “born to the bottle,” as it were since his mother took one look at him after birth and promptly collapsed.  She didn’t recover until he was 8 years old, a year after he had demonstrated his precocity by weaning himself.  Woodcock said “Foxhole”, as well as numerous posters and informational cartoons earned him “fame without fortune” as well as visits from well-known cartoonists.

On August 20, 1945, Woodcock published Foxhole’s last hurrah, a retrospective of the calamitous sailor’s wartime service.  Like his creator, after almost 4-years of service he was leaving the Navy.  After the war, Woodcock found employment in New York City, penciling, and inking many comic books.  In the late 1940s, he moved away from comic strips and into the more lucrative field of advertising and commercial art.  It was a successful career that took him around the globe.  But through it all, his stint in the Navy was not lost even though it may have been forgotten by many.  When Robert Woodcock looks back he notes that, “We serve our time in the military in whatever capacity and with little thought about what if any impact we have had during our enlistment.” 

After the war, Woodcock was commissioned to do documentary artwork for the U.S. Air Force.  Many of these illustrations are now found in the Pentagon, the Smithsonian Institution art collection and at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.  Later he was given the honorary rank of “Colonel, USAF” for his work.  His work would take him from Seattle, to Washington, D.C., New York, and Los Angeles.  In 1982 he retired to Prescott, Arizona, and in 2004 he relocated to Roseburg, Oregon.

NOTE:  Robert George Woodcock died on May 25, 2011.  He was survived by his wife, Dorothy Jane Woodcock, who later died on May 4, 2017.  The two have been interred together at Roseburg National Cemetery in Roseburg, Oregon.

Submitted by CDR Roy A. Mosteller, USNR (Ret)