Bill Mauldin

William Henry "Bill" Mauldin (/ˈmɔːldən/; October 29, 1921 – January 22, 2003) was an American editorial cartoonist who won two Pulitzer Prizes for his work. He was most famous for his World War II cartoons depicting American soldiers, as represented by the archetypal characters Willie and Joe, two weary and bedraggled infantry troopers who stoically endure the difficulties and dangers of duty in the field. His cartoons were popular with soldiers throughout Europe, and with civilians in the United States as well.

Mauldin was born in Mountain Park, New Mexico. His grandfather had been a civilian cavalry scout in the Apache Wars and his father was an artilleryman in World War I. After growing up there and in Phoenix, Arizona, Mauldin took courses at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts under the tutoring of Ruth VanSickle Ford. While in Chicago, Mauldin met Will Lang Jr. and became fast friends with him. Mauldin entered the US Army via the Arizona National Guard in 1940.

While in the 45th Infantry Division, Mauldin volunteered to work for the unit's newspaper, drawing cartoons about regular soldiers or "dogfaces". Eventually he created two cartoon infantrymen: Willie and Joe, who became synonymous with the average American GI.

During July 1943, Mauldin's cartoon work continued when, as a sergeant of the 45th Division's press corps, he landed with the division in the invasion of Sicily and later in the Italian campaign. Mauldin began working for Stars and Stripes, the American soldiers' newspaper; as well as the 45th Division News, until he was officially transferred to the Stars and Stripes in February 1944. By March 1944, he was given his own jeep, in which he roamed the front, collecting material and producing six cartoons a week. His cartoons were viewed by soldiers throughout Europe during World War II, and were also published in the United States. The War Office supported their syndication, not only because they helped publicize the ground forces but also to show the grim and bitter side of war, which helped show that victory would not be easy. Willie was on the cover of Time Magazine in the June 18, 1945 issue, and Mauldin himself made the cover in the July 21, 1961 issue. While in Europe, Mauldin befriended a fellow soldier-cartoonist, Gregor Duncan, and was assigned to escort him for a time. (Duncan was killed at Anzio in May 1944.)

Mauldin was not without his detractors. His images—which often parodied the Army's spit-shine and obedience-to-orders-without-question policy—offended some officers. After a Mauldin cartoon ridiculed General George Patton's decree that all soldiers be clean-shaven at all times, even in combat, Patton called Mauldin an "unpatriotic anarchist" and threatened to "throw [his] ass in jail" and ban Stars and Stripes from his Third Army jurisdiction. General Dwight Eisenhower, Patton's superior, told Patton to leave Mauldin alone; he felt the cartoons gave the soldiers an outlet for their frustrations. "[Stars and Stripes] is the soldiers' paper," he told him, "and we won't interfere." After the war, Mauldin told an interviewer, "I always admired Patton. Oh, sure, the stupid bastard was crazy. He was insane. He thought he was living in the Dark Ages. Soldiers were peasants to him. I didn't like that attitude, but I certainly respected his theories and the techniques he used to get his men out of their foxholes.

Mauldin's cartoons made him a hero to the common soldier. GIs often credited him with helping them to get through the rigors of the war. His credibility with the common soldier increased in September 1943, when he was wounded in the shoulder by a German mortar while visiting a machine gun crew near Monte Cassino. By the end of the war he also received the Army's Legion of Merit for his cartoons. Mauldin wanted Willie and Joe to be killed on the last day of combat, but Stars and Stripes dissuaded him.

Mauldin in 1945

In 1945, at the age of 23, Mauldin won a Pulitzer Prize for his wartime body of work, exemplified by a cartoon depicting exhausted infantrymen slogging through the rain, its caption mocking a typical late-war headline: "Fresh, spirited American troops, flushed with victory, are bringing in thousands of hungry, ragged, battle-weary prisoners". The first civilian compilation of his work, Up Front, a collection of his cartoons interwoven with his observations of war, topped the best-seller list in 1945, and he appeared on the cover of Time Magazine with Willie and Joe.

After the war, Mauldin turned to drawing political cartoons expressing a generally civil libertarian view associated with groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union. These were not well received by newspaper editors, who were hoping for more apolitical Willie and Joe cartoons. Mauldin's attempt to carry Willie and Joe into civilian life was also unsuccessful, as documented in his memoir Back Home in 1947. In 1951, he appeared with Audie Murphy in the John Huston film The Red Badge of Courage, and in Fred Zinnemann's Teresa.

In 1956, he ran unsuccessfully for the United States Congress as a Democrat in New York's 28th Congressional District. Mauldin had this to say about his run for Congress: "I jumped in with both feet and campaigned for seven or eight months. I found myself stumping around up in these rural districts and my own background did hurt there. A farmer knows a farmer when he sees one. So when I was talking about their problems I was a very sincere candidate, but when they would ask me questions that had to do with foreign policy or national policy, obviously I was pretty far to the left of the mainstream up there. Again, I'm an old Truman Democrat, I'm not that far left, but by their lives I was pretty far left."

Mauldin's famous cartoon following the Kennedy assassination

In 1959 Mauldin won a second Pulitzer Prize, while working at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, for depicting Boris Pasternak—who had won the Nobel Prize for his novel Doctor Zhivago, but was denied permission to leave the Soviet Union to accept it—in a Gulag, asking another prisoner, "I won the Nobel Prize for literature. What was your crime?" The following year he won the National Cartoonist Society Award for Editorial Cartooning. In 1961, he received their Reuben Award as well.

In addition to cartooning, Mauldin worked as a freelance writer, and illustrated many articles for Life magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, Sports Illustrated, and other publications. He brought back Joe as a war correspondent, writing letters to the stateside Willie. Willie and Joe appeared together only in tributes to the "soldiers' generals", Omar Bradley and George C. Marshall, after their deaths; for a Life article on the "New Army"; and as a salute to the late cartoonist Milton Caniff.

In 1962, he moved to the Chicago Sun-Times. One of his most famous post-war cartoons appeared in 1963, following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, depicting the statue of Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial, his head in his hands.

In 1969, Mauldin was commissioned by the National Safety Council to illustrate the booklet on traffic safety, which the council published every year. These pamphlets were regularly issued without copyright, but for this issue it was pointed out that Mauldin's cartoons were under copyright, even though the rest of the pamphlet was not.

In 1985, Mauldin won the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism.

El Paraqua, Española, New Mexico

Mauldin remained with the Sun-Times until his retirement in 1991. He was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame on May 19, 1991. On September 19, 2001, Sergeant Major of the Army Jack L. Tilley presented Mauldin with a personal letter from Army Chief of Staff General Eric K. Shinseki, a hardbound book with notes from other senior Army leaders and several celebrities to include Walter Cronkite, Tom Brokaw and Tom Hanks. He also promoted Mauldin to the honorary rank of first sergeant.

Mauldin drew Willie and Joe for publication one last time on Veterans Day in 1998 for a Peanuts strip, in collaboration with its creator Charles M. Schulz, a World War II veteran himself. Schulz signed the strip "Schulz, and my hero..." with Mauldin's signature underneath.

New Mexico native Mauldin frequently returned to his home state and on at least one occasion did a few drawings on the wall of the El Paraqua restaurant in Española. They have since had frames hung around them.

Mauldin died on January 22, 2003, from complications of Alzheimer's disease and a bathtub scalding. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery on January 29, 2003. Married three times, he was survived by seven children. (His daughter Kaja had died of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2001.)

On March 31, 2010, the United States Post Office released a first-class denomination ($0.44) postage stamp in Mauldin's honor depicting him with Willie & Joe.

In 2005, Mauldin was inducted into the Oklahoma Cartoonists Hall of Fame in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma by Michael Vance. The Oklahoma Cartoonists Collection, created by Vance, is located in the Toy and Action Figure Museum.

Grab your Socks!, foreword by Mauldin

• Star Spangled Banter – 1941
• Sicily Sketchbook – 1943
• Mud, Mules, and Mountains – 1944
• News of the 45th (with Don Robinson) – 1944
• Up Front – 1944
• This Damn Tree Leaks – 1945
• Back Home – 1947
• A Sort of a Saga – 1949
• Bill Mauldin's Army – 1951
• Bill Mauldin in Korea – 1952
• Up High with Bill Mauldin – 1956
• What's Got Your Back Up? – 1961
• I've Decided I Want My Seat Back – 1965
• Bill of Rights Day Celebration – 1969
• The Brass Ring – 1971
• Name Your Poison – 1975
• Mud and Guts –1978
• Let's Declare Ourselves Winners and Get the Hell Out – 1985

In April 2008, Fantagraphics Books released a two-volume set of Mauldin's complete wartime Willie and Joe cartoons, edited by Todd DePastino, titled Willie & Joe: The WWII Years (ISBN 978-1-56097-838-1).

From 1969 to 1998, cartoonist Charles M. Schulz (himself a veteran of World War II) regularly paid tribute to Bill Mauldin in his Peanuts comic strip on Veterans Day. In the strips, Snoopy, dressed as an army vet, would annually go to Mauldin's house to "quaff a few root beers and tell war stories." By the end of the strip Schulz had depicted 17 of Snoopy's visits. Schulz also paid tribute to Rosie the Riveter in 1976, and Ernie Pyle in 1997 and 1999.

The films Up Front (1951) and Back at the Front (1952) were based on Mauldin's Willie and Joe characters; however, when Mauldin's suggestions were ignored in favor of making a slapstick comedy, he returned his advising fee; he said he had never seen the result.

Mauldin also appeared as an actor in the 1951 films The Red Badge of Courage and Teresa, and as himself in the 1998 documentary America in the '40s. He also appeared in on-screen interviews in the Thames documentary The World at War.