GI Joe noun a quintessential American soldier US,1935 A term fuelled by a cartoon in the 1940s, a Robert Mitchum movie in 1945 and a line of toys starting in 1964.
Charlie Company was a “grunt” unit; its men were the foot soldiers, the “GI Joes,” who understood they were to take orders, not question them. — Seymour Hersh, MyLai4, p. 18, 1970