No one could say the artist behind Willie and Joe didn’t know soldiers’ sufferings – he shared them. While Mauldin’s wounds were non-life-threatening, the experience only added to his comic strips’ authority. In fact, while crouching in a foxhole with some GIs near Monte Cassino in the fall of 1943, he was peppered with German mortar fragments. He liked to stay close to the action too, mostly to maintain the authenticity of his work. But while many in the army press corps documented the fighting with typewriters and cameras, Mauldin used a sketchpad and drawing pencils. Surprisingly, becoming the voice of war-weary GIs couldn’t have been further from Bill Mauldin’s mind when he signed up for the National Guard in 1940. But as the 19-year-old Chicago Academy of Fine Art-trained illustrator became a citizen soldier, he turned his considerable talents (not to mention his wry wit) to capturing the gritty and absurd reality of life in uniform.īy the time Mauldin landed on the beaches of Sicily with the 45 th Infantry in 1943, his doodles were appearing regularly in the division’s own newspaper. Soldiers immediately identified with his characters Willie and Joe many saw their own experiences reflected in the misadventures of Mauldin’s disheveled duo.Īnd as the 45 th pushed on into Italy, the young cartoonist was made a full-fledged combat correspondent. In fact, many combat veterans said they couldn’t have made it through the hell without a daily chuckle from the famous anti-heroes. Not surprisingly, the biting and honest humour was a huge hit with the rank-and-file and helped keep soldiers’ spirits up during some of the conflict’s darkest days. The popular single-panel cartoon focused on the trials and tribulations of a pair of bearded and beat up riflemen as they survived life on the front lines. was the creative genius behind Willie and Joe, perhaps the best-loved comic strip to come out of World War Two. The baby-faced infantryman from Phoenix, Ariz. That was a just one of the many fictional yet real-world-inspired wartime moments that were amusingly immortalized by William Henry “Bill” Mauldlin, history’s most famous ‘fighting cartoonist.’ “Yesterday, you saved my life and I swore I’d pay you back,” one says to the other. PICTURE TWO SOAKING AND EXHAUSTED GIs squatting in a mud-filled ditch.
was the creative genius behind Willie and Joe, perhaps the best-loved comic strip to come out of World War Two.” (Image by Bill Maudlin) “A baby-faced infantryman from Phoenix, Ariz. Just about every American soldier in the European Theater read the popular Stars and Stripes comic strip “Willie and Joe”.
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