“What’s the Matter with my Mortar?”

During my time in the US Army, I was always amused by some of the training material put out targeted at a group of people who often read at a sixth grade level, yet needed to understand relatively technical information.

One of the more interesting, if not humorous, efforts comes from Preventive Maintenance Monthly, a magazine put out by the US Army Logistics and Engineering Center.


While the hardware can be very detailed and the knowledge very serious, the method of delivery is everything but, usually coming in the form of cartoonish characters, such as this lovable, huggable AH-64 Apache:

How could anyone be scared of him? Other than the machine gun and rockets, that is.

Since the PMM is aimed at Army mechanics, a profession dominated by guys, the magazine has always used attractive women to keep readers focused:

At least women have made progress in PMM. The further back in years and issues you go, the less clothing they tended to be illustrated with.

For some reason, the friendly mortar drawn here reminds me of the giant talking cigarette in Doonesbury:

If you’d like to read the entire, unedited issue, you can do so as a publicly available pdf file.

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