The title is a play on the phrase "Johnny get your gun",[4] a rallying call that was commonly used to encourage young American men to enlist in the military in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. That phrase was popularized in the George M. Cohan song "Over There", which was widely recorded in the first year of American involvement in World War I. Johnny Get Your Gun is also the name of a 1919 film directed by Donald Crisp.[5]
Many of protagonist Joe Bonham's early memories are based on Dalton Trumbo's early life in Colorado and Los Angeles. The novel is inspired by articles about two men with severe injuries that Trumbo read about: the tearful hospital visit of Edward, Prince of Wales to Curley Christian, considered to be the first and only Canadian soldier in WWI who was a quadruple amputee, and a British major whose body was damaged so horrifically that he was reported as MIA to his family. The family discovered the truth years after his death in the hospital.[6][7] "Though the novel was a pacifist piece published in wartime, it was well reviewed and won an American Booksellers Award in 1940."[8] (It was published two days after the declaration of war in Europe, more than two years before the United States joined World War II.)
