The Patriot Files Forums - Bill Mauldin, of WW II Fame of Willie & Joe, died today

Bill Mauldin, of WW II Fame of Willie & Joe, died today
Comment on the passing of Bill Mauldin

His contributions to GI's psyche & sense of humor can never be adequately
gaged.. My WW II Marine Father, really loved you..
thank you Bill, and God speed... our prayers for your family...(s)
"ColonelDan" Dan Cedusky, Champaign IL

Posted on Wed, Jan. 22, 2003

Bill Mauldin, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, dies at 81

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. (AP) - Bill Mauldin, the Pulitzer Prize-winning
cartoonist who portrayed World War II reality laced with humor, died
Wednesday. He was 81.

Mauldin, one of the 20th century's pre-eminent editorial cartoonists, died
of complications from Alzheimer's disease, including pneumonia, at a Newport
Beach nursing home, said Andy Mauldin, 54, of Santa Fe, N.M., one of the
cartoonist's seven sons.

``It's really good that he's not suffering anymore,'' he said. ``He had a
terrible struggle.''

His characters Willie and Joe, a laconic pair of unshaven, mud-encrusted
dogfaces, slogged their way through Italy and other parts of battle-scarred
Europe, surviving the enemy and the elements while caustically and
sarcastically harpooning the unctuous and pompous.

They were the vessels that Mauldin, a young Army rifleman, filled with wry
understatement to portray the tedium and treachery of war, entertaining and
endearing himself to millions of fellow soldiers in the war and to Americans
at home.

``He had powerful helping influence on people with his sense of humor,''
Andy Mauldin said. ``Whatever you are going through, it helps if you can
find something to smile about.''

In his classic book ``Up Front,'' Mauldin wrote that the expressions on Joe
and Willie are ``those of infantry soldiers who have been in the war for a
couple of years.''

``If he is looking very weary and resigned to the fact that he is probably
going to die before it is over, and if he has a deep, almost hopeless desire
to go home and forget it all; if he looks with dull, uncomprehending eyes at
the fresh-faced kid who is talking about all the joys of battle and killing
Germans, then he comes from the same infantry as Joe and Willie,'' he wrote.

Mauldin called himself ``as independent as a hog on ice,'' and his
nonconformist approach brought him a face-to-face upbraiding from Gen.
George Patton. Mauldin continued to draw what he wanted.

In 1945, at age 23, his series ``Up Front With Mauldin'' won him the first
of his two Pulitzer Prizes for editorial cartooning.

Mauldin won the second in 1959, while he was an editorial cartoonist for the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, for depicting Soviet novelist Boris Pasternak
saying to another gulag prisoner: ``I won the Nobel Prize for literature.
What was your crime?''

Mauldin wrote and drew 16 books and acted in two movies, including John
Huston's 1951 production of ``The Red Badge of Courage'' starring real-life
war hero Audie Murphy.

Mauldin was born in Mountain Park, N.M., and spent much of his life in the
West. A teacher in high school helped him nurture his art talent, and he
attended the Academy of Fine Art in Chicago, learning from such teachers as
cartoonist Vaughn Shoemaker, a Pulitzer Prize-winner for the Chicago Daily
News.

Mauldin enlisted in 1940 and, assigned as a rifleman to the 180th Infantry,
started drawing cartoons depicting training camp for the Division News, the
newspaper for the 45th Division.

Once Mauldin's 45th Division shipped overseas, Stars and Stripes, the
servicewide newspaper, began publishing his drawings.

Author David Halberstam wrote: ``One senses that if a war reporter who had
been with Hannibal or Napoleon saw Mauldin's work he would know immediately
that the work was right.''

After the war, Mauldin freelanced for a time. He joined the Post-Dispatch in
1958, then switched to the Chicago Sun-Times in 1962.

It was at the Sun-Times that he drew one of his most poignant and famous
cartoons on the day of President John F. Kennedy's assassination. The
drawing showed a grieving Abraham Lincoln, his hands covering his face, at
the Lincoln Memorial.

In recent years, as Mauldin battled Alzheimer's, thousands of veterans,
widows and other well-wishers have sent him letters, offering thanks and
stories of survival.

``You have managed to capture the irony, double standards and outright
insanity of Army life,'' one man wrote, ``in a way that allows us to laugh
at ourselves and our leaders and keep moving forward in the face of
adversity.''

He also had a steady stream of visitors who had fought in WWII.

``They tried to pay him back for support he had given them,'' Andy Mauldin
said.

The campaign to recognize the cartoonist was sparked by veteran Jay
Gruenfeld, who spent years wondering what happened to the man who had made
him laugh in a foxhole under fire. He sought out Mauldin and then wrote to
veterans organizations and contacted newspaper columnists urging people to
remember him.

Mauldin is survived by former wives Jean Mauldin of Los Angeles and
Christine Lund of Santa Fe, N.M.; sons Bruce, 59, of Dallas; Tim, 57, of Los
Angeles; Andy, 54, of Santa Fe; David, 51, of Santa Fe; John, 49, of
Albuquerque, N.M.; Nat, 48, of Los Angeles; and Sam, 16, of Santa Fe.

His former wife Natalie Mauldin died in 1971. His daughter, Kaja Mauldin,
20, died in 2001.

Funeral arrangements were pending, with burial planned in Arlington National
Cemetery.

Sempers,

Roger

United We Stand
God Bless America

Remember our POW/MIA's
I'll never forget!