REMBRANDT OF THE FOXHOLE

With his unerringly funny cartoons about the hell of World War II, Sergeant Bill Maudlin spoke to the boys in the foxholes. His caustic art, published in the military paper Stars and Stripes, earned him the wrath of General Patton-and the eternal gratitude of every terrified, exasperated G. I.

STEPHEN E. AMBROSE

History

He was just a kid, 19 years old, when he went off to war, but he had a wonderful eye, a sharp ear, a unique touch in his cartoons, and a deep appreciation for the frontline G.I.'s of World War His theater was Italy, his division the 45th, but his cartoons spoke to the boys in the foxholes— whether those holes were in Italy, Belgium, France, Holland, Germany, or the Pacific Theater. He was wounded in Venafro, Italy, in 1943, and wears the Purple Heart not as a medal but as a badge of office. He is generally, and rightly, regarded as the artist who created the most accurate, realistic, truthful portrait of the American soldier. His achievement was possible thanks to his love for those dogfaces he lived with, a love that shines through in every cartoon. Sergeant William H. Mauldin worked for Stars and Stripes. It was a newspaper "run by soldiers for soldiers," in the words of the supreme commander, General Dwight Eisenhower. Andy Rooney wrote for Stars and Stripes, as did other aspiring journalists. But the man most closely identified with the paper was Bill Mauldin.

He laughed—and made his readers laugh—to keep from crying or screaming or just plain going bonkers. His subject was men at war; his characters were caught up in the worst experience anyone can undergo. Living underground in a constant state of tension, deprived of sleep, often muddy, trying to kill perfect strangers who are trying to kill you—and that is only the beginning. Weeks go by without a shower or a change of underwear. Shells explode at random intervals, spraying shrapnel all around. There are endless marches. Your buddies lose their hands, legs, lives. Stupid officers from the rear echelon give senseless orders. Combat is the most dangerous, degrading, exhausting, frightening, disgusting condition imaginable. For the men caught up in it, it seems it will never end.

Out of all this, Mauldin created cartoons that hit the mark: completely realistic and true, and yet funny. The "last pair of dry socks" cartoon, for example, speaks to the prevalence of trench foot among the foxhole dwellers. Their feet were always wet. They were ordered to change to dry socks at least once a day, but where to get dry socks? Men would take off their wet socks, hang them around their necks so that they would dry from body heat, and replace them with the socks they had put around their necks the previous day. Still it was impossible to keep their feet dry, as it seemed it was always raining, and when it wasn't, it was snowing.

Mauldin's principal characters, Willie and Joe, were the essential G.I.'s, the real thing. So were his stuffed-shirt staff officers. One of Mauldin's regular targets was the chickenshit officer. In his classic memoir, Wartime, Paul Fussell, a 20-year-old company commander during the war and one of America's leading literary scholars today, defined the term "chickenshit" precisely: "It refers to behavior that makes military life worse than it need be: petty harassment of the weak by the strong.... It can be recognized instantly because it never has anything to do with winning the war."

Many officers protested strongly against Mauldin's cartoons, the most prominent being General George S. Patton, a martinet who ordered his men to wear ties and to shave every day, even in combat. In one cartoon Mauldin had Willie and Joe drive a beat-up jeep into Patton's Third Army area. A large sign informs them, YOU ARE ENTERING THE THIRD ARMY!

There follows a list of fines: for anyone entering the area with no helmet,.$25; no shave, $10; no tie, $25; and so on. Willie tells Joe, "Radio th' of man we'll be late on account of a thousand-mile detour." Patton was so angry he tried to stop the circulation of Stars and Stripes in his area and called Mauldin in for a dressingdown. Afterward, Patton told Eisenhower, "If that little s.o.b. ever comes in the Third Army area again, I'll throw him in jail." In April 1945, Eisenhower wrote the editor of the newspaper, "A great deal of pressure has been brought on me to abolish such things as Mauldin's cartoons and the 'B Bag' [the gripe column], You will make sure to not interfere in matters of this kind." And he ordered Patton to keep his hands off Mauldin and the paper.

Mauldin's insights into the mind of the G.I. were sharp and vivid. The "fugitive from th' law of averages" cartoon gets it exactly right. Combat infantry went through stages from rationalization to realization. At first the soldier thought, It can't happen to me, because I'm too young, too good-looking, my mother loves me too much, I'm too well trained. After a day, a week, a month, depending on the individual, it began to sink in: It can happen to me, and it will if I'm not more careful. Then, after another varying period of time, the realization came: It is going to happen to me. And it did: in the rifle companies in Europe in 1944-45, the turnover was more than 200 percent. General officers almost never came to the front line, and if they did they usually made pests or fools of themselves, as Mauldin knew and drew in the "do ya hafta draw fire?" cartoon, in which a general stands over two enlisted men, obviously blowing their cover. The general's riding stick is a nice touch; as "Peanuts" creator Charles Schulz, himself a G.I. in Europe, put it, "If you look closely, you will see that Bill always rendered machine guns, M-l rifles, halftracks, etc., with accuracy. They were not 'cartooned.' To do so would have destroyed the balance of the material, cheapened the idea, and destroyed the bitterness behind the humor."

The bitterness was justified, but it was the special triumph of Mauldin and the men he drew that they transcended it. In his book Up Front, Mauldin offered some advice for those who want to know what it is like to be in combat: "Dig a hole in your back yard," he wrote. "Sit in the hole until [rain] water climbs up around your ankles.... So there is no danger of your dozing off, imagine that a guy is sneaking around waiting for a chance to club you.... Get out of the hole, fill a suitcase full of rocks, pick it up, put a shotgun in your other hand, and walk on the muddiest road you can find. Fall flat on your face every few minutes as you imagine big meteors streaming down to sock you."