The E-Sylum:  Volume 5, Number 11, March 10, 2002, Article 15

FEATURED WEB SITE

  This week's featured web site is a actually a collection of
  pages discussing the "Short Snorter".  Popular throughout
  World War II, these pieces of paper money (often U.S.
  one dollar bills) signed by a number of people as
  souvenirs.   Here is an excerpt from one of the pages -
  an interview with Retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Edward
  Komyati:

  "During World War II, a short snorter was a little less than a
  full drink at a bar. But an aircrew member's short snorter
  was a chain of paper currency, taped together, end-to-end,
  from various countries they had visited. The longer your short
  snorter, the more countries you had visited.  Long short-snorters
  also meant free drinks at the bar, since the person with the
  shortest one had to buy the round, says retired Lt. Col. Edward
  J. Komyati, an aviation historian and former WW II pilot.

  "You knew you always had your taxi fare home," Komyati
  explains. "You could also use the short snorter to collect
  phone numbers, keep track of crews, or get signatures of
  famous people."

  According to Komyati, he ran across former first lady Eleanor
  Roosevelt in the Pacific in early 1943. He happened to have
  his short snorter with him and got her to autograph it. Komyati's
  short snorter is also signed by "walk outs": men whose planes
  went down in the Himalayas, but who managed to walk out
  alive.

  Today, Komyati's short snorter is more than 6 feet long and
  held together with yellowing, crumbling Scotch tape.  It begins
  with a dark green U.S. "Silver Certificate" dollar and moves
  on to blue Congo francs, deep red Chinese yuan, light green
  Ceylon rupees, and yellow, brown and purple currencies
  ranging from 500 Palestine mils to 10 Tripotania (modern day
  Libya) lire.

  Komyati's short snorter includes script issued to soldiers in
  Italy after World War II, and images of everything from a
  palm tree to the countenances of Chinese leaders and a
  pharoah. A few of the languages on his short snorter are
  Arabic, Portuguese, Burmese, French, Chinese and English.
  Though the autographs are now faded on the paper, the
  memories of the people Komyati knew and admired are
  still alive in his mind.

     http://www.af.mil/news/Jul1997/n19970711_970836.html
     http://www.winstonchurchill.org/fh108wit.htm
     http://www.scottiepress.org.uk/writers/snorter.htm
     http://www.456thbombgroup.org/47snortr.html
     http://www.456thbombgroup.org/moresnrt.htm

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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