Some interesting information about Joe Dimaggio's US Army Air Force on the ground service.
He enlisted on February 14, 1943, and was discharged in September 1945, after about 32 months of a 36 month enlistment.
Every school kid knew who Mickey Mantle was in the fifties but I did not know anything about the man he replaced. Announcers kept mentioning Dimaggio's name, though, and I considered him to be just an old baseball guy. Not until he married Marilyn Monroe in 1954 did I actually learn how great a player he was.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/celebrity/say-it-aint-so-sergeant-joe