Re: Willie, Joe and Bill in WWII

[Donald A. Wisdom]

Donald A Wisdom,P.E.
donald...@comcast.net
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Steve

Bill will always be remembered by all WWII enthusiasts.

Best

Don

On Nov 26, 2013, at 8:39 AM, smcc...@aol.com wrote:

 

 

 

 

Willie, Joe and  Bill in WWII Get  out your history books and open them to the chapter on World War II.   Today's lesson will cover a little known but very important hero of whom  very little was ever really known. Here is another important  piece of lost US history, which is a true  example of our American Spirit.  Makes ya proud to  put this stamp on your envelopes...     Bill Mauldin  stamp honors grunt's hero. The post office gets a lot of criticism. Always  has, always will.  And with the renewed push to get rid of Saturday  mail delivery, expect complaints to intensify. But the   United  States Postal Service deserves a standing  ovation for something that happened last month:  Bill Mauldin got his  own postage stamp. Mauldin died at age 81 in the early  days of  2003.  The end of his life had been rugged.  He had been   scalded in a bathtub, which led to  terrible injuries and  infections;  Alzheimer's disease was inflicting its cruelties. Unable  to care for himself  after the scalding, he became a resident of a   California nursing home, his   health and spirits in  rapid decline   He  was not  forgotten, though.  Mauldin, and his work, 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 he drew for; 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!   "I'm  beginning to feel like a fugitive from the' law of  averages."  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, 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  accomplished:+    "By the way, wot  wuz them changes you wuz  Gonna make when you took over last  month, sir?" He  won the  Pulitzer Prize, was featured 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 big-shotted or high-hatted 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.    "This is the' town my pappy  told me about."   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."  "Th' hell this ain't  th' most important hole in the  world. I'm in it."  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, grand fathers 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. I  thought you would all enjoy reading and seeing this bit of American  history!