America mourns court jester and chief patriot Bob Hope

The comic, movie star, singer and vaudevillian made Tinseltown his own over his 100 years, but will be best remembered for his tireless work entertaining US troops at home and abroad for over half a century.

While other Hollywood stars have gone to Iraq and the Persian Gulf to entertain troops in the world's newest conflict, none has either the stature or the dedication to the patriotic task that Hope made his mission in life.

"No one has ever replaced him," said General Michael Teilmann, who heads the Bob Hope Center of the Los Angeles branch of the United Services Organization (USO), the body that organizes entertainment for troops.

"There are celebrities like Arnold Schwarzenegger who was in Iraq recently but it's not the same," the retired National Guard general, who first saw Hope in action in Vietnam in 1969, told AFP.

Starting in World War II and continuing through conflicts in Korea, Vietnam and finally the Gulf War, Hope travelled 10 million kilometers (six million miles) to make his USO battlefield appearances with all the apparent ease of man playing from hole to hole on a golf course.

And while Hope, who died Sunday of pneumonia just two months after he celebrated his century, became the most decorated entertainer in history with around 2,000 awards, his most cherished was his status as an honorary US army veteran bestowed on him by then president Bill Clinton in 1997.