Civilians picture "Yank, The Army Weekly" as a legendary newspaper published by Army brass hats and soft-job seeking soldiers: a cross between printed morale tonic, a military trade paper, and legalized pornography.

Yank touches none of those extremes. It looks a little like PM, even living on a 5c-per-copy circulation, reads like Time without the Yale education, and flaunts the corny characteristics of the home town weekly.

Yank is not comparable to any combination of civilian periodicals. It is not even a newspaper. It is unique; doing a unique job in a unique way. Published every week entirely by 104 enlisted men, Yank prints five editions in three countries, posts correspondents at 17 world news spots from Chungking to the Alean Highway, and is sold on almost every battle front and ocean on the globe.

No officer or civilian can write for Yank. Its staff consists exclusively of Army enlisted men plus two sailors and a marine sergeant. Every one has endured the tortures of basic training and most of them take their turn at an overseas front covering troop life and action for Yank.

Thrilling action stories have already been sent back by these field correspondents. One sergeant crashed in the jungles of Brazil and spent two bitter weeks chopping his way out. He wrote his story and was immediately shipped to the Indian front.

An artist-in-khaki hiked up and down the front lines in Tunisia, and finally sent home a whopper of a story with typewriter instead of pen and ink. Another soldier made 10 action flights out of Chungking and cracked up on his eleventh. On his hospital bed he received his reward: promotion from sergeant to staff sergeant.

No Commissions for 'Yank' Editors

But commissions are unthinkable to these men: shoulder bars would prove too burdensome, literally making their work impossible.

With all this effort and sacrifice, you will never find a copy on any newsstand, and few civilians will ever even see an issue. Yet the editors of Yank are planning even further expansions, and are organizing the world's first attempt at "chain store journalism."

Yank is not to be confused with the other three Army publications. The daily Stars and Stripes is published in London chiefly as a substitute for the hard-to-appreciate English newspapers. The Caribbean Sentinel and the CBI Roundup, distributed in China, Burma, and India, are both regional weeklies.

When Yank is full grown it will be published in New York, London Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Alaska, and Cairo. Already it is printed in the first three of these places. The main offices will remain in New York City where they now are, and mats of the pages will be flown especially to the chain branches. There the weekly will be run off by civilian letter press and distributed easily to the armed forces overseas as soon as the men at home receive it.

This chain network it a creation entirely new to journalism, and is made possible only by the size, dispersion, and uniformity of Yank's audience. (Yank's circulation figures are one of those non-military military secrets.)

The vitals of this octopus exist on the fourth floor of a New York office building across the street from the white skyscraper of the New York Daily News. In large, airy quarters the home staff conceives, organizes, lays out, and creates each edition of Yank.

Except for the armed guard at the door, the khaki uniforms and the rack of chevron-emblazoned coats, the office looks like any other publication's editorial rooms, even to the crimson coke machine and the maps on the walls.

Handful of Officers in Charge