FACTS ABOUT BILL MAUDLIN

1. One of the greatest cartoonists in American History was born on Oct. 29, 1921.  He was trained in cartooning at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. He enlisted in the Army (his father fought in WWI) in September, 1940.  He first served in Sicily in 1943.  He was wounded in the shoulder by a mortar near Monte Cassino.
2. He was assigned to the newspaper “Stars and Stripes” and given his own jeep to roam the front lines for material. He developed the characters Willie and Joe based on soldiers he had known in his infantry days.  They represented the average soldier who put up with all the hardships of soldier life.  Maudlin was second only to Ernie Pyle in popularity among the G.I.s.
3. He may have been popular with the enlisted, but he was not popular with Gen. Patton. Patton was upset with his depictions of undisciplined and ill-groomed infantrymen.  He called Maudlin an “unpatriotic anarchist” and threatened to arrest him and ban the Stars and Stripes in his command.  Eisenhower intervened and ordered Patton to back off.  A meeting was arranged between Maudlin and Patton.  Patton yelled at Maudlin for several minutes, but Maudlin stood up to the tirade.  He argued that the soldier’s had grievances that needed to be aired. 
4. Maudlin won his first Pulitzer Prize in 1945 for his wartime cartoons, exemplified by a cartoon showing exhausted American soldiers with the caption “Fresh, spirited American troops flushed with victory, are bringing in thousands of hungry, ragged, battle-weary prisoners.” He had a best-seller with the autobiographical collection entitled “Up Front”. He wanted to kill off Willie and Joe on the last day of the war, but the Stars and Stripes editors dissuaded him.  He continued their adventures after the war on the home front, but the series was not a success.
5. In 1951, he appeared in two movies. He was great as Audie Murphy’s side kick in “The Red Badge of Courage” and also was in “Teresa”.
6. In 1958, he became an editorial cartoonist for newspapers. He was interested in civil liberties and his liberal slants were sometimes unpopular with the newspaper readers.  He took on racism, the KKK, and McCarthyism.  He won his second Pulitzer Prize for a cartoon depicting suppression of civil liberties in the Soviet Union.  His most memorable political cartoon was one showing Lincoln at his memorial mourning the death of Kennedy.
7. He ran for Congress in New York in 1956, but was too liberal for his district.
8. He was friends with Charles Schulz of Peanuts fame. Schulz used Willie and Joe in a series of Snoopy cartoons to commemorate Veterans Day.  In 1998, Maudlin drew the duo for the last time for a Peanuts cartoon.
9. He won the Reuben Award as best cartoonist in 1961 and was put on a postage stamp in 2010.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bill-Mauldin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Mauldin

https://spartacus-educational.com/ARTmauldin.htm

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