“Mauldin was obviously special because of Willie and Joe.

Despite becoming wealthy and famous, he never abandoned his shy country sensibility. Yet Mauldin was often uncomfortable with the adoration showered on him because of Willie and Joe. “He was sharp, bitter and funny all at the same time.” “I don’t use this word lightly, but he was a genius,” said Andy Rooney, the “60 Minutes” correspondent who worked as a reporter for Stars and Stripes during the war.

While battling Alzheimer’s in the Newport Beach nursing home where he died, Mauldin was inundated with visitors and thousands of cards and letters. For decades, veterans sought out Mauldin to thank him for helping them get through the war. Mauldin’s embrace of the average “dogface” on the front lines earned him the undying love of soldiers. Eisenhower, himself part of the Army’s old guard, thought soldiers needed an outlet to vent their frustrations. Patton called in Mauldin, dressed down the sergeant and threatened to throw him in jail.īut Patton’s boss - Gen. Patton - whom Mauldin lampooned in a sketch about his insistence that soldiers be cleanshaven and wear ties, even in combat - was so infuriated he tried to stop Stars and Stripes from being circulated among his 3rd Army. Mauldin’s detractors said he was sowing seeds of discontent. “Mauldin captured the basic attitudes of the GI. “The old professional soldiers didn’t care for these new people, these wiseacres who talked backed and didn’t show them the proper respect,” said Lee Kennett, professor emeritus of history at the University of Georgia and author of “GI: The American Soldier in World War II.” It was an apt description of America’s new military.

They were just doing their job and wanted only to finish it and go home. There was no gauzy sentimentality in Willie and Joe, no chest-thumping heroics. Mauldin’s characters offered a counterpoint to the clean-cut, gung-ho fighting man put forth by the Army publicity machine. “My reactions are those of a young guy who has been exposed to some of it, and I try to put those reactions in my drawings.” I’m not old enough to understand what it’s all about,” Mauldin wrote in 1945. “I haven’t tried to picture this war in a big, broad-minded way. The caption on a drawing of exhausted soldiers walking hunched over in the rain reads, “Fresh, spirited American troops, flushed with victory, are bringing in thousands of hungry, ragged, battle-weary prisoners.” It’s hard to tell which are the prisoners. “Joe, yestiddy ya saved my life an’ I swore I’d pay ya back,” Willie says in another sketch.

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