Mauldin, Bill (1921–2003)

Childhood

Mauldin was born on a farm in New Mexico in 1921. His family was of modest means, and his father, a jack-of-all-trades, kept them on the move throughout the Southwest for much of Mauldin's childhood. The young Mauldin took an interest in cartooning, observing a local cartoonist at work, and at the age of 15 he responded to an ad placed by Chicago's Academy of Fine Art. He borrowed the tuition from his grandmother and enrolled. He joined the school's Junior ROTC unit, later quipping, “The free ROTC uniform appealed to me” (Brass Ring, 50). Upon graduation in 1939 he joined a National Guard unit with a friend and was soon serving jointly as a cartoonist for the 45th Division News and as an infantryman on training maneuvers with his unit.

While serving stateside with the 45th Division, Mauldin got to know the individuals who would serve as his famous characters. “Willie” was modeled after a laconic Oklahoman, Johnnie Waddell. “Joe” was originally inspired by a Native American from Oklahoma whom Mauldin's tentmates called the “Medicine Man”—“a smart-assed Choctaw Indian” (Up Front, 42) with “the eyes of a turkey buzzard, a broken beak, … a degree from the University of Oklahoma, a talent for memorizing and reciting epic poems, and a conviction that there would never be peace with the white man until it was legal for Indians to buy whiskey” (Brass Ring, 96).

Up Front in the Mediterranean Theater

As his two characters “matured” overseas, Mauldin later wrote, “for some reason Joe seemed to become a Willie and Willie more of a Joe.” Mauldin did not choose to depict Willie and Joe as risk-taking daredevils, but as representatives of “the great numbers of men who … sweat in the foxholes that give their more courageous brethren claustrophobia.” He understood instinctively what sociologists referred to as the importance of the primary group: Willie and Joe “go on patrol when patrols are called for, and they don't shirk hazards, because they don't want to let their buddies down.” He also gave the characters qualities noted by social scientists and other observers: they “fight and kill even though they hate killing and are scared to death while doing it” (Up Front, 45). Mauldin's style in drawing all of his characters—bold black brush strokes, with few distinctions between light and dark— [Page 462]captured well the stark conditions of mud, rocky terrain, snow, life and death.

The June 18, 1945, Time magazine cover featuring Willie, one of the pair of GIs serving as Bill Mauldin's main characters in the cartoons he created for the Stars and Stripes during World War II. (Time Life Pictures/Getty

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