Content note: Comic strip about sexual encounters on liberty and venereal disease, naming syphilis and gonorrhea. This object is shown as it was published. Why
Please be careful
Navy health comic strip in nine panels: a sailor boasts of his liberty connections and goes off with a woman while his bespectacled shipmate Toby repeats Please be careful. It ends at the pro station and naval dispensary. The warning about venereal disease is delivered through a shipmate's voice in servicemen's slang.
Propaganda techniques used in this poster
- Date
- 1944
- Period
- Second World War
- Made by
- Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, U.S. Navy (VP-7); artist Woodcock
- Region
- North America
- Country
- United States
- Medium
- Poster
- Issuer type
- Military
- Regime
- Roosevelt Administration
- Leader
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Audience
- Own forces
- Purpose
- Warn or inform
- Themes
- Health, War and the military
- Event
- World War II
- Regime
- Roosevelt administration
- Leader
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, retrieved October 4, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain (U.S. government work)
Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, U.S. Navy. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, 44-PA-1518 (NAID 515184).
Text on the object
PLEASE BE CAREFUL BOY, HAVE I GOT ME SOME SWEET LIBERTY CONNECTIONS.. HI'YA BETTY- THIS IS BERT- BACK AGAIN... THAT'S HER, TOBY! JUST AS SWEET AS SHE WAS 6 MONTHS AGO.. 6 MONTHS IS AN AWFUL LONG TIME... PLEASE BE CAREFUL. CHARLIES' PLACE AFTER YOU, MY LOVE- THIS CHICK IS STRICTLY A ONE-MAN WOMAN ----THAT "BE CAREFUL" STUFF! HONEY- THIS IS JUST LIKE OLD TIMES. REMEMBER? PRO STATION NOT THIS BABE, JOE. SHE'S A FRIEND OF MINE. EASY TO GET SYPHILIS AND GONORRHEA NAVAL DISPENSARY PSST, TOBY- PLEASE BE CAREFUL !! GATE 3 [partial signs: ...N'S ...UGS; ...S PLACE] [signature: WOODCOCK] [imprint: VP-7 - Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, U. S. Navy] [imprint: U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1944 - O - 983783]
