From: Lou Ringer
As we face the harsh realities of our time in history, it sometimes
helps to look back and reflect on other times in our history when our
country faced difficulties that seemed to challenge who we are as
a people and what this country stands for. This is a story of a man
who brought humor to help us understand the horrors of war and the
gratitude that so many who served felt for his gift Today, we still have
brave soldiers who serve all over the world. We also have men and
women who are facing situations equally as horrific as we try to find
an answer to the attacks on our schools and churches, as they risk
their lives, time and time again, to protect us and our children as we
go about our day. They do not question, they do not hesitate. Just
like our soldiers abroad, they study; they prepare; they practice; and
when the time came, they acted. And for that we must be very, very
grateful.
He meant so much to the millions of Americans who fought in World
War II, and to those who had waited for them to come home. He was a
kid cartoonist for Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper; Mauldin’s
drawings of his muddy, exhausted, whisker-stubble infantrymen Willie
and Joe were the voice of truth about what it was like on the front
lines.
Mauldin was an enlisted man just like the soldiers for whom he
drew; his gripes were their gripes, his laughs their laughs, his heartaches
their heartaches. He was one of them. They loved him.
He never held back. Sometimes, when his cartoons cut too close
for comfort, superior officers tried to tone him down. In one memorable
incident, he enraged Gen. George S. Patton, who informed
Mauldin he wanted the pointed cartoons celebrating the fighting men,
lampooning the high-ranking officers to stop. Now! The news passed
from soldier to soldier. How was Sgt. Bill Mauldin going to stand up to
Gen. Patton? It seemed impossible.
Not quite. Mauldin, it turned out, had an ardent fan: Five-star Gen.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, SCAFE, Supreme Commander of the Allied
Forces in Europe . Ike put out the word: “Mauldin draws what Mauldin
wants.” Mauldin won. Patton lost.
If, in your line of work, you’ve ever considered yourself a young
hotshot, or if you’ve ever known anyone who has felt that way about
him or herself, the story of Mauldin’s young manhood will humble
you. Here is what, by the time he was 23 years old, Mauldin had accomplished:
He won the Pulitzer Prize & was on the cover of Time
magazine. His book “Up Front” was the No. 1 best-seller in the United
States.
All of that at 23. Yet, when he returned to civilian life and grew
older, he never lost that boyish Mauldin grin, never outgrew his excitement
about doing his job, never a big-shot or high-hat to the people
with whom he worked every day.
I was lucky enough to be one of them. Mauldin roamed the hallways
of the Chicago Sun-Times in the late 1960s and early 1970s with
no more officiousness or air of haughtiness than if he was a copyboy.
That impish look on his face remained.
He had achieved so much. He won a second Pulitzer Prize, and he
should have won a third for what may be the single greatest editorial
cartoon in the history of the craft: his deadline rendering, on the day
President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, of the statue at the
Lincoln Memorial, slumped in grief, its head cradled in its hands. But
he never acted as if he was better than the people he met. He was still
Mauldin, the enlisted man.
During the late summer of 2002, as Mauldin lay in that California
nursing home, some of the old World War II infantry guys caught wind
of it. They didn’t want Mauldin to go out that way. They thought he
should know he was still their hero. Gordon Dillow, a columnist for the
Orange County Register, put out the call in Southern California for
people in the area to send their best wishes to Mauldin. I joined Dillow
in the effort, helping to spread the appeal nationally, so Bill would not
feel so alone. Soon, more than 10,000 cards and letters had arrived
at Mauldin’s bedside.
Better than that, old soldiers began to show up just to sit with Mauldin, to let him
know that they were there for him, as he, so long ago, had been there for them. So
many volunteered to visit Bill that there was a waiting list. Here is how Todd DePastino,
in the first paragraph of his wonderful biography of Mauldin, described it:
“Almost every day in the summer and fall of 2002, they came to Park Superior
nursing home in Newport Beach , California , to honor Army Sergeant, Technician
Third Grade, Bill Mauldin. They came bearing relics of their youth: medals, insignia,
photographs, and carefully folded newspaper clippings. Some wore old garrison caps.
Others arrived resplendent in uniforms over a half century old. Almost all of them wept
as they filed down the corridor like pilgrims fulfilling some long-neglected obligation.”
One of the veterans explained to me why it was so important: “You would have to
be part of a combat infantry unit to appreciate what moments of relief Bill gave us. You
had to be reading a soaking wet Stars and Stripes in a water-filled foxhole and then
see one of his cartoons.”
Mauldin is buried in Arlington National Cemetery . Last month, the kid cartoonist
made it onto a first-class postage stamp. It’s an honor that most generals and admirals
never receive. What Mauldin would have loved most, I believe, is the sight of the two
guys who keep him company on that stamp. Take a look at it. There’s Willie. There’s
Joe. And there, to the side, drawing them and smiling that shy, quietly observant smile,
is Mauldin himself. With his buddies, right where he belongs. Forever.
What a story, and a fitting tribute to a man and to a time that few of us can still
remember. But I say to you youngsters, you must most seriously learn of, and remember
with respect, the sufferings and sacrifices of your fathers, grandfathers and great
grandfathers in times you cannot ever imagine today with all you have. But the only
reason you are free to have it all is because of them and those brave men and women
who, even today, follow in their footsteps.
