Bill Mauldin

American war cartoonist

William Henry Mauldin, cartoonist: born Mountain Park, New Mexico, 29 October 1921; three times married (seven sons, and one daughter deceased); died Newport Beach, California 22 January 2003

Bill Mauldin was one of the best-known American cartoonists of the Second World War. In May 1945, at the age of 23, he received a Pulitzer Prize for his work, the youngest ever winner. Though he later worked as an editorial cartoonist and had his drawings syndicated to 300 newspapers in the United States – winning a second Pulitzer Prize in 1959 and many other accolades – he will be best remembered for his "Up Front" cartoon series, featuring Willie and Joe, the battle-weary, unkempt and mud-spattered GIs with their wry observations on the life of the common soldier in war-torn Europe.

William Henry Mauldin was born in Mountain Park, New Mexico, in 1921, the second son of an apple farmer and handyman. At the age of 13 he borrowed $20 from his grandmother and enrolled on a correspondence course for cartoonists. After his parents split up in 1937 he and his brother moved to Phoenix, Arizona, and then he studied for a year at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, whose former pupils had included E.C. Segar, creator of Popeye the Sailor.v

Mauldin then worked as a freelance before joining the 120th Quartermaster Regiment of the Arizona National Guard (part of the 45th Infantry Division) in 1940. He volunteered to be cartoonist of the newly founded 45th Division News, and Willie and Joe appeared in his very first drawing for the paper.

In 1943 Mauldin sailed with the US task force to North Africa and took part in the Sicily landings that year. As US troops drove north up the mainland of Italy, Mauldin and 45th Division News moved to Naples, where the Mediterranean edition of Stars and Stripes began to reprint his cartoons. Wounded near Cassino, Mauldin was awarded a Purple Heart and drew the well-known cartoon of Willie at a field station saying, "Just gimme th' aspirin, I already got a Purple Heart."

Mauldin served with the Allied forces in France and Germany and his Pulitzer Prize in May 1945 was for his drawing captioned "Fresh, spirited American troops, flushed with victory, are bringing in thousands of hungry, ragged, battle-weary prisoners. (News item)", which featured a GI who appeared as downtrodden, dejected and bedraggled as the POWs he was accompanying through a rain-soaked village. The same year Mauldin published the best-seller Up Front, and two Hollywood films based on Willie and Joe, Up Front (1951) and Back at the Front (1952), later appeared.

In 1947 he stopped drawing cartoons, working for the next decade as a journalist, pilot and film actor (he appeared in John Huston's The Red Badge of Courage and Fred Zinnemann's Teresa, both in 1951). He was twice President of the American Veterans' Committee and in 1956 ran unsuccessfully for Congress.

However, a chance meeting in 1958 with Daniel Fitzpatrick, editorial cartoonist of the St Louis Post-Dispatch, led to Mauldin's return to drawing. When Fitzpatrick retired, Mauldin took over his job and in 1959 won his second Pulitzer Prize for a cartoon commenting on the treatment of Boris Pasternak in the Soviet Union (one prisoner in a Siberian camp says to another, "I won the Nobel Prize for Literature. What was your crime?").

Mauldin moved in 1962 to the Chicago Sun-Times, where he won acclaim for his attacks on racial segregation and the Ku Klux Klan, and for poignant cartoons on the deaths of John F. Kennedy (Lincoln weeping, with his hands covering his face) and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Mauldin retired in 1991 at the age of 70 after injuring his drawing hand while tinkering with a vintage jeep.

The tradition of cartoon humour commenting on the lot of the hard-pressed infantryman goes back to the Crimean War. Such drawings have always been greatly appreciated by troops at the front, but like Bruce Bairnsfather – the creator of "Old Bill" in the First World War – Mauldin fell foul of the authorities. Indeed, General George S. Patton once summoned him to his headquarters and threatened to imprison him.

Asked why he drew so few officers or personnel from the navy or air force, Mauldin replied: "I draw pictures for and about dogfaces because I know what their life is like, and I understand their gripes." Originally Willie was a tall, "smart-assed Choctaw Indian" with a large hook-nose who spoke halting English and Joe was his shorter "red-necked straight man". When they first appeared in 1943, they were both clean-shaven and separate personalities, but, said Mauldin,

As they matured overseas during the stresses of shot, shell and K-rations, and grew whiskers because shaving water was scarce in mountain fox-holes, for some reason Joe seemed to become more of a Willie and Willie more of a Joe.

Mauldin continued to draw the pair in peacetime but eventually they faded away, except for a brief reappearance during the Korean War.

Mark Bryant