World War II Day by Day World War II was the single most devastating and horrific event in the history of the world, causing the death of some 70 million people, reshaping the political map of the twentieth century and ushering in a new era of world history. Every day The Daily Chronicles brings you a new story from the annals of World War II with a vision to preserve the memory of those who suffered in the greatest military conflict the world has ever seen.

BILL MAULDIN, SOLDIER CARTOONIST, STORMS SICILY BEACH

Near Scoglitti, Sicily, Italy July 10, 1943

On this date 21-year-old Oklahoma national guards­man Bill Maul­din landed on the south­west coast of Sicily with K Com­pany, 180th Infan­try Regi­ment, 45th Divi­sion as part of Oper­a­tion Husky (July 9/10 to August 17, 1943). Maul­din is less known for his 3‑year ser­vice in World War II than for his cartoon drawings of Amer­i­can enlisted men—chiefly rifle­men like him­self—through his main char­ac­ters, Willie and Joe, who appeared in news­papers between 1940 and 1945. Though Maul­din mostly saw com­bat in Italy, where he created the major­i­ty of his car­toons, his griz­zled, mud-covered, combat-weary “dog­faces” or “doggies”—as he called com­bat enlistees—achieved star-status owing to their appear­ance first in the weekly 45th Divi­sion News in 1940 Okla­homa (soon syn­di­cated in dozens of national news­papers), then in early spring 1944 in the daily Stars and Stripes. The widely popu­lar 8‑page Stars and Stripes was read by hun­dreds of thou­sands of service­members in all Euro­pean and Afri­can thea­ters of oper­a­tion and, after May 1945, in the Pacific thea­ter. Maul­din was assigned to work full-time at the Stars and Stripes. He wrote about and drew humor­ous cari­ca­tures of rifle­men, medics, com­bat engi­neers, artil­lery observers, and other front­line sol­diers from close to 20 divi­sions whom he met, lived, slept, and served with. He faith­fully shared their spoken words and thoughts in his single-panel cartoons (see examples below).

Though linked together at the hip in the public’s mind, sharp-nosed Willie and pug-nosed Joe (Maul­din him­self) first appeared sep­a­rately in the cartoonist’s drawings—Joe before Pearl Harbor and general mobi­li­za­tion, Willie after­ward. Repre­senting aver­age Amer­i­can GIs, the 2 car­toon sol­diers became best buddies over the next several years, belly­aching about their war-weari­ness, home­sick­ness, bore­dom, monot­o­ny, rain, snow, freezing cold weather, cursed mud and wet fox­holes, K‑rations, smelly feet, and the thought that one or both of them might not make it out of the war alive. Ernie Pyle, a Pulit­zer Prize-winning Amer­i­can jour­nalist and widely read war corres­pon­dent, admired Maul­din for his “terribly grim and real” drawings and for his droll cap­tions that captured Joe and Willie’s habit­ual dog­face appear­ance (unkempt faces, their worn-out boots, wet smelly socks and feet, baggy, mud-caked uni­forms) along with some of their feelings—in other words, what it was to look like and be a foot sol­dier trapped in a miser­a­ble war for months on months or years. Maul­din’s tar­geted audi­ence roared with laughter as ser­vice men and women shared the cartoon soldiers’ pain.

Army brass, however, could and did find Maul­din annoying. Chief among the young artist’s detrac­tors was the spit-and-polish-obsessed Third U.S. Army Gen. George S. Patton Jr. He cursed at the 2 car­toon figures over their scruffy, “unsol­dierly” appear­ance. In one of Maul­din’s car­toon panels, Willie and Joe are depicted driving a beat-up jeep. A road sign informed the 2 sol­diers “You Are Entering the Third Army [area].” Under­neath was a list of fines for GIs entering the area unshaven ($10), with­out hel­met or tie ($25 each), and so on. The cap­tion had Willie telling Joe: “Radio th’ ol’ man [i.e., com­pany HQ] we’ll be late on account of a thou­sand-mile detour.” Patton’s revenge was a 45‑minute pri­vate dressing down of Sergeant Mauldin short of an official reprimand.

Unlike popular war correspondent Pyle who was killed by a sniper on the Japa­nese island of Iejima (Ie Shima) on April 18, 1945, Mauldin (1921–2003) sur­vived the war with nothing more than a shrap­nel wound and a Purple Heart. The first civil­ian compi­la­tion of his work, Up Front, a col­lec­tion of his car­toons and foxhole-level view of the war in Europe, topped the New York Times best-seller list in 1945 and 1946. Before that Willie, Joe, and Maul­din had a piece in Time maga­zine with Willie on its June 18, 1945, cover. Maul­din’s post­war attempt to show­case the ve­ter­an rifle­men back home as civilians was unsuccessful.

Bill Mauldin: Foremost World War II Cartoonist

Willie and Joe: Mauldin at work, Rome, ItalyWillie and Joe: Willie gifted Joe his last pair of dry socks

Left: This photograph shows Stars and Stripes cartoonist Bill Mauldin, in a fur-lined moun­tain cap, seated at his desk in an office of the Ital­ian news­paper Il Mes­sagero (The Mes­sen­ger) in Rome, Italy, ca. 1945. The Stars and Stripes, like its World War I prede­ces­sor of the same name, was intended to pro­vide uncen­sored news from sol­diers for sol­diers. It was not an organ for the high brass to use. Maul­din had a regular 2‑column space in the Stars and Stripes, giving his simple black-and-white brush-work car­toons a promi­nent pre­sence in the news­paper. Speaking of the founder of the World War II ver­sion of the Stars and Stripes, a former pri­vate, now colonel, Mauldin wrote: “Because our paper was exclu­sively for com­bat soldiers, we didn’t have to worry about hurting the feelings of high brass hats. . . The great major­ity of gene­rals and author­i­ties who see the sheet over here leave us strictly alone.” Which wasn’t exactly true. Mauldin con­fessed that “a few car­toons I had done about gene­rals had a def­i­nitely insub­or­di­nate air about them.” Maul­din, in a dust­up with a deputy thea­ter com­mander in Italy, was accused of “under­mining some­body’s morale” in “the rear echelon.” A corps com­mander (a gene­ral) told the car­toonist to buck up: “When you start drawing pic­tures that don’t get a few com­plaints, then you’d better quit, because you won’t be doing any­body any good.” Mauldin later stood his ground when Gen. Patton tried to clean his clock (see above). Maudlin, Up Front, pp. 26–29.
Right: Caption, Willie: “Joe, yestiddy ya saved my life an’ I swore I’d pay ya back. Here’s my last pair of dry socks.” Long-suffering infantry­men were forced to endure rain, mud, more rain, more mud, and so on. “The worst thing about mud,” Maul­din wrote, “out­side of the fact that it keeps armies from advancing, is that it causes trench foot. There was a lot of it that first winter in Italy [1943–1944]. The dog­gies found it diffi­cult to keep their feet dry, and they had to stay in wet fox­holes for days and weeks at a time. If they couldn’t stand the pain they crawled out of their holes and stumbled and crawled (they couldn’t walk) down the moun­tains until they reached the aid sta­tion. Their shoes were cut off, and their feet swelled like bal­loons. Some­times the feet had to be ampu­tated. But most often the men had to make their ago­nized way back up the moun­tain and crawl into their holes again because there were no replace­ments and the line had to be held.” Mauldin, Up Front, pp. 35–37.

Willie and Joe: The most important foxhole in worldWillie and Joe: can’t git no lower

Left: As Mauldin put it, for a rifleman occupying a cramped fox­hole, snug as a bug in a rug (if such a thing were even possi­ble), nothing is more pre­cious or vital than that nothing disturbs that axis. Willie weighs which axis of war is impor­tant to him and which isn’t. “Th’ hell this ain’t th’ most impor­tant hole in the world,” Willie yells to Joe over the sound of exploding artil­lery. “I’m in it.” If all hell hasn’t broken out to dis­turb the spin­ning axis, the war may be con­sidered going well no matter what is hap­pening off in the dis­tance. But if Willie and Joe are sweating out a fierce artil­lery bar­rage and Joe next to him happens to be severely injured, even killed by a piece of flying shrap­nel, then the war has gone horribly wrong. Mauldin, Up Front, pp. 19–20.

Right: Caption: Joe: “I can’t git no lower, Willie. Me buttons is in th’ way.” In Stephen E. Am­brose’s intro­duc­tion to Maul­din’s book Up Front, the famous author and his­torian wrote (pp. viii–ix): “For the infantry­men, just about the worst exper­i­ence was being caught in the open in a shelling. They would press them­selves to the earth and pray to God. . . At other times, they thought ‘this must be the end of the world.’ One veteran told me that he knew I wouldn’t believe it but that I couldn’t imagine how small a human being can make his body. ‘During a shelling,’ he said, I could get my whole body under my hel­met.’ Mauldin’s cartoon speaks to this point.” Mauldin, Up Front, p. 39.

Willie and Joe: Fugitives from the law of averagesWillie and Joe: Yank and German equally sad wretches

Left: Caption: Willie to Joe, “I feel like a fugitive from th’ law of averages.” Mauldin remarked: “All the old divi­sions are tired—the out­fits which fought in Africa and Sicily and Italy and God knows how many places in the Paci­fic. . . [M]en in the older divi­sions . . . have seen actual war at first hand, seeing their bud­dies killed day after day, trying to tell them­selves that they are dif­fer­ent—they won’t get it; but knowing deep inside them that they can get it.” Mauldin, Up Front, pp. 38–39.

Right: Caption: “Fresh, spirited Amer­i­can troops, flushed with vic­tory, are bringing in thou­sands of hungry, battle-weary pri­soners . . .” Maul­din chided the States-side press for some­times being two-faced. “I drew the German sol­dier as a poor unfor­tu­nate who didn’t want to be there,” he penned in Up Front, which is just the way he had drawn Willie and Joe. In 1944 Maul­din won the first of two Pulit­zer Prizes in Edi­torial Car­tooning for his depic­tion of grimed-faced German POWs being herded by equally grimed-face GIs trudging to a holding pen in the rear. Maul­din noted for the record, “After a few days of battle, the vic­to­ri­ous Yank who has been sweeping ahead [in battle] doesn’t look any pret­tier than the sullen super­man he captures.” Mauldin, Up Front, pp. 21–22.

Medley of Bill Mauldin’s Willie and Joe Cartoons Set to 1940s Music