Ukraine uses old PS Magazines for maintenance tips

For seven decades, Soldiers have used PS: The Preventive Maintenance Magazine as a guide to properly maintain their vehicles, weapons and equipment.

Since 1993, the small office that created, edited and published the cargo-pocket sized booklet was located on Redstone Arsenal. Despite printing its last copy in July 2017, the publication’s importance lives on.

PS Magazine recently burnished its legacy by having its most iconic character – Master Sgt. Half-Mast McCanick – inducted into the Class of 2024 Ordnance Corps Hall of Fame. Of course, Half-Mast is simply the face of the dozens of writers, editors and contracted artists who made the magazine a reality for more than seven decades.

The magazine is also popular overseas. The Ukrainian military is using articles from PS Magazine to help maintain the U.S.-provided equipment it received in their fight against Russia.

Rob Hill, the editor of PS Magazine, said he received an email late last year from a team working to translate old copies of the magazine into the Ukrainian language.

“They expressed thanks to the magazine for the work we’ve done all these years and sought help obtaining archival copies,” Hill said of the team.

PS Magazine got its start with Will Eisner, an established comic writer and illustrator who was drafted into the Army in 1942. In 1944, Eisner was assigned to the newly created Army Motors magazine – a text-heavy magazine with technical illustrations and photographs, supplemented by cartoons. After the war, Eisner left the service and created his own corporation.

At the outbreak of the Korean War, Eisner’s company was asked to replace a text-heavy Army Motors magazine and PS Magazine was born.

The home office of PS was first located at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, from April 1951 through January 1955, when it was moved to Rantan Arsenal, New Jersey. It was moved again in October 1962 to Fort Knox, Kentucky. It remained there until July 1973 when it moved to the Lexington-Blue Grass Army Depot in Lexington, Kentucky. In June 1993, it moved to Redstone Arsenal.