Reveille!
Sponsor's bond-sale sheet: a full-width photograph of a mud-covered soldier lying among barbed wire and a helmet, with a verse about wounded men rising at reveille and a plea to buy 'one extra bond'. The tell is the transfer of the soldier's suffering onto the act of buying; the footer reads 'Back the Attack! - BUY MORE THAN BEFORE'.
Propaganda techniques used in this advertisement
- Date
- 1941
- Period
- Second World War
- Made by
- Celanese Corporation of America
- Region
- North America
- Country
- United States
- Medium
- Advertisement
- Issuer type
- Corporation
- Regime
- Roosevelt Administration
- Leader
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Purpose
- Fundraise
- Themes
- War and the military, Economy and finance
- 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)
Celanese Corporation of America. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, 44-PA-1644 (NAID 515311).
Text on the object
REVEILLE!
"Reveille!
It's the call to awaken to another day,
A bright new day beyond the hills of war,
A new day where the sun bursts forth
on sweet, fresh fields of peace.
But that's tomorrow's Reveille.
❖ ❖ ❖
What's Reveille today?
Today the bugle echoes over torn terrain
Where trees and slime and flesh and steel
Lie still—
As still as death, whose halls they form.
Reveille today calls 'rise to maimed
and weary men
So stiff with mud and caking sweat and
unwashed clothes and blood
They cannot stir—
The sons of women, every one, who
cannot move for sheer fatigue.
Yet rise they do. Awake they must; press
forward fighting
Inch by inch
And isle by isle,
One by one.
And one by one
As lead and steel and flame leap through
their flesh
They fall
And retch
And clutch the earth
And answer never more to Reveille.
A soldier's Reveille today.
❖ ❖ ❖
And Reveille for you today?
America's Awakening?
Who here at home will answer this—
The call to humans safe at home
To buy a bond;
Just one more bond.
A hundred dollars more or less—
Your part where soldiers' part is life itself.
A bond you can't afford, you say?
A boy just now gave up a life that he
could not afford to lose.
Buy just one extra bond this month—
A bond to bring the battle to a quicker
close
And bring a boy back home.
One extra bond for you today
To hasten Reveille tomorrow;
Tomorrow's Reveille;
Tomorrow's sun of peace;
Return of fighting men to home and
hearth and harmony;
Tomorrow's hallowed Reveille for all—
If you but wake to Reveille today.
Wake up, Americans!
Wake up!
Buy Bonds.
Buy Bonds
BUY BONDS."
Back the Attack! - BUY MORE THAN BEFORE
A message to America broadcast June 14 on "Great Moments in Music,"*
presented by Celanese Corporation of America on the Columbia Network.
[imprint:] ®REG. U. S. PAT. OFF.
