• LIFE

The Harsh Poetry of World War II Battlefield Signs

2 minute read

How many words do you see every day? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Newspaper and website headlines, emails, tweets, street signs, books, Nooks, Kindles, magazines — to a degree unmatched in human history, we are surrounded by words. We’re inundated by written instructions, admonitions, advertisements, entertainments. In fact, it sometimes seems as if our world is made not of bricks and mortar, but of infinitely rearranged letters.

“The universe is made of stories, not of atoms,” the American poet Muriel Rukeyser once wrote, and more and more, as time goes by, that sounds about right.

But what if paying strict heed to every written word that one saw every single day meant the difference between survival and annihilation? What if the misreading of a sign on an unfamiliar road, for example, meant not the inconvenience of a missed turn, but a sudden, violent death?

Here, LIFE.com takes a look at some of the countless signs that troops encountered during the course of World War II, from the islands of the Pacific to the deserts of North Africa to the ruined cities of Europe. Official warnings; adamant instructions; wry, handwritten inside jokes — all of them silent reminders of a conflict that, until the very end, dished out one paramount, universal command: Pay attention!

[Buy the LIFE book, D-Day: Remembering the Battle That Won the War — 70 Years Later.]

Midway Atoll, 1942
Midway Atoll, the North Pacific, 1942.Frank Scherschel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
1943 Italy
Italy, 1943.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
1943 Italy
Italy, 1943.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
1943 Italy
Italy, 1943.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
1944 Anzio
Anzio, 1944.George Silk—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
North Africa, 1943.
North Africa, 1943.Hart Preston—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
1944 Italy
Italy, 1944.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
1943 Buna Beach, The Pacific
Buna Beach, 1943.George Strock—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Loiano, Italy, 1945.
Loiano, Italy, 1945.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
1944 Italy
Italy, 1944.George Silk—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
1945 Cologne, Germany
Cologne, Germany, 1945.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
1945 Cologne, Germany
Cologne, Germany, 1945.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
1945 Cologne, Germany
Cologne, Germany, 1945.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
1945, Manila Philplippines
Manila, Philippines, 1945.Carl Mydans—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
1943 Tunisia
Tunisia, 1943.Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Tarawa Atoll, 1944. ("To Frisco -- What the hell do you care? You're not going there.")
Tarawa Atoll, 1944. ("To Frisco -- What the hell do you care? You're not going there.")Peter Stackpole—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
1944 Saipan
"Hollywood and Vine," Saipan, 1944.Peter Stackpole—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
1944 Anzio
Anzio, 1944.George Silk—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Anzio, 1944
Anzio, 1944.George Silk—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Okinawa, 1945
Okinawa, 1945.W. Eugene Smith—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Allied drive towards Berlin, 1945.
Allied drive towards Berlin, 1945.William Vandivert—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Italy, 1944
Italy, 1944.Carl Mydans—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

More Must-Reads From TIME

Contact us at letters@time.com