I've had a soft spot for Bill Mauldin since discovering a book of his on my parents shelf when I was ever so small, and thought it was great that there was this comic book for grownups. That book may well have been Up Front, although I think that it had more of his youth and post-war years, while this is strictly about the war. It was published in 1945 and was written well before V-E day; there's a postscript written from Italy where the fighting is continuing, even though the attention in the war has turned to France. The cartoons are from 1944, evidently, made for the Stars and Stripes and syndicated back home by United Features. I don't know how popular Mr. Mauldin was at the time; I expect he's pretty well forgotten now. His stuff is still brilliant.
If you have seen any of his stuff, it's likely to be a Willie and Joe cartoon. Willie and Joe are two combat veterans in Italy, and later in France. Willie is (I think) the older one, maybe thirty or thirty-one, with a hatchet nose. Joe is probably twenty-three or twenty-four, with a button nose. Other than that, they are pretty much identical: mud-splattered, unshaven infantrymen with cigarettes hanging from their lips. The cartoons are generally gags that seem like you could just tell them without the picture. Willie tells Joe, who has got hold of a newspaper and is reading about the invasion of France, "Th'hell this ain't th' most important hole in th' world. I'm in it." Or Willie telling Joe, as they peer out of their foxhole at a tank, "I'd rather dig. A moving foxhole attracks th' eye." But the joke, or rather the point, of the cartoons isn't the gag but Willie and Joe themselves. They are tired beyond belief, scared, ill-equipped, filthy, lice-ridden and probably diseased in a variety of ways, and they keep going because there isn't any other way home than through this war.
One of my favorites has Willie and Joe standing next to each other. Willie's helmet is on the ground, and his head rests on his hands folded on the tip of his rifle, butt-down on the ground. He's slumped in an overcoat that's too big for him, and his hair is lank and greasy. Joe isn't leaning on anything; his head lolls forward a bit, and his shoulders slump under the weight of his pack, but his hand is on his carbine. His helmet is tipped forward over his eyes, and his whiskers cover most of the rest of his face. In the background, one clean (and clean-shaven) young soldier is staring at them, and the other is asking "How ya gonna find out if they're fresh troops if ya don't wake 'em up an' ask 'em?"
The most famous cartoon, I think, is captioned only with a news item: "Fresh, spirited American troops, flushed with victory, are bring in thousands of hungry, ragged, battle-weary prisoners. The filthy figures sloughing through the mud and rain look hungry, ragged and battle-weary, all right, but they are the American troops, or rather, the American troops are indistinguishable from the prisoners. I believe that one won some sort of award or other, and I've seen it reprinted here and there. It's a little too self-conscious for my tastes, though. I think much the same point is made in a Willie and Joe where Willie, gun smoking, empty K and C rations in a pile near his lair, says "I coulda swore a coupla krauts was usin' that cow for cover, Joe. Go wake up the cook." Or, for that matter, when a relatively awake-looking Willie, clearly about to land with his company and try to take a beachhead, just turns to Joe and under the light of the flares says, "Try to say sumpin' funny, Joe."
Of course, these hit me particularly because we're at war again, with extremism, or terror, or Iraq, or someone. The more things change. I'll tell you one more, while I'm at it. Willie and Joe are in the foxhole with another filthy unshaven soldier. They're drunk (the bottle is nearly empty, lying nearby in the mud) and playing cards. Joe looks particularly unwell, whether because his cards are lousy or because he has hit that part of the drunk is unclear. The third fellow turns his placid, hollow-eyed face to Willie, who asks, "By th' way, what wuz them changes you wuz gonna make when you took over last month, sir?"
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.