Bill, Willie, and Joe

Across the Fence #283

If you remember World War II, you will also remember the most famous cartoonist of the war, Bill Mauldin, and his characters, Willie and Joe. I was born during World War II, just over a month before D-Day. I was too young to remember Willie and Joe at the time, but after finding myself in another war with the 4th Infantry, I can relate to the Willie and Joe characters and the situations they found themselves in.

Mauldin’s cartoons earned him a Pulitzer Prize in 1945 at the age of 23. He won a second Pulitzer Prize in 1959 as a political cartoonist with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He also won the National Cartoonist Society Award for Editorial Cartooning and their Reuben Award in 1961. In 1962 he moved to the Chicago Sun-Times and remained with them until his retirement in 1991.

Mauldin’s talent as a cartoonist was recognized while he was assigned to the 45th Division’s newspaper staff when he enlisted in 1940. After the war began, he served as an infantryman. He landed at Anzio and received a Purple Heart after being wounded. In 1944 he joined Stars and Stripes and developed the characters of Willie and Joe. They were unshaven, filthy, aged beyond their years, and had an irreverent attitude toward officers and the army’s spit and polish. Willie and Joe expressed the dreams, hopes, hardships, and fears of combat-weary GI’s. They showed the real life of a GI in war and the average soldier appreciated the honesty.

After Ernie Pyle, America's most popular journalist in World War II, wrote an article about the work of Mauldin, United Feature Syndicate picked him up in 1944 and his cartoons began appearing in newspapers all over the United States.

Some officers, especially General George Patton, didn’t like his cartoons and tried to get them banned. However, General Eisenhower, told Patton to leave Mauldin alone. He felt Mauldin’s cartoons gave soldiers an outlet for their frustrations.

Bill Mauldin fully understood the infantryman, and was able to convey that understanding through his cartoon artwork. In referring to infantrymen, Mauldin said:

“The surest way to become a pacifist is to join the infantry. I don't make the infantryman look noble, because he couldn't look noble even if he tried. Still there is a certain nobility and dignity in combat soldiers and medical aid men with dirt in their ears. They are rough and their language gets coarse because they live a life stripped of convention and niceties. Their nobility and dignity come from the way they live unselfishly and risk their lives to help each other. They are normal people who have been put where they are, and whose actions and feelings have been molded by their circumstances… when they are all together and they are fighting, despite their bitching and griping and goldbricking and mortal fear, they are facing cold steel and screaming lead and hard enemies, and they are advancing and beating the h@#* out of the opposition. They wish to h@#* they were someplace else, and they wish to h@#* they would get relief… But they stay in their wet holes and fight, and then they climb out and crawl through minefields and fight some more.”

In 1945, Time Magazine had Mauldin’s “Willie” on the cover of the June 18th issue. I have that cover and the story about Mauldin, and keep it with his book, “Up Front,” published in 1945. Tucked within the pages of the book is a newspaper clipping of a book review. Also tucked in the book is the letter I received from Mauldin, on Chicago Sun-Times stationary, dated October 26, 1972.

I had written him a letter, telling how much I admired his work and the Willie and Joe cartoons. I included some copies of cartoons I had drawn about Vietnam. They were very similar in content to Mauldin’s cartoons. I told him the names of wars change, but the subject matter when dealing with war, never changes.

In his typewritten reply, he thanked me for my letter and said it had brightened a day full of nothing else but deadlines. He signed his name and drew a smiling Willie and Joe type of face next to it. I appreciate that he took the time to reply to my letter.

Another of my cartoonist heroes is Charles Schulz. He was also a World War II veteran and a fan of Mauldin’s cartooning ability too. Schulz paid tribute to Bill Mauldin in his Peanuts comic strip each Veterans Day from 1969-1998. Snoopy would be dressed as an army vet, on his way to Mauldin’s house to “quaff a few root beers and tell war stories.” I remember those strips.

Bill Mauldin died on January 22, 2003 from complications of Alzheimer’s disease and was buried in Arlington Cemetery. On March 31, 2010, the U. S. Post Office released a first-class stamp that depicts Mauldin, along with his famous characters, Willie and Joe.

When I look at the 50+ cartoons I drew about Vietnam, I see a lot of Mauldin’s influence. Different wars, but nothing really changes. As Mauldin said in later years: “I wanted to make something out of the humorous situations which come up even when you don’t think life could be any more miserable.”

I agree Bill. May you, Willie, and Joe, all rest in peace.