23. The Cartoonist Who Got Under General Patton’s Skin (Part 1)
William Henry “Bill” Mauldin became famous during WWII as a cartoonist for the military newspaper Stars and Stripes, with his sardonic Willie and Joe cartoons, depicting the travails of a pair of disheveled combat soldiers. Born in 1921 in New Mexico, Mauldin studied cartooning at the Chicago Academy of Fine arts, before enlisting in the US Army in 1940. In uniform, he began drawing for the 45th Division’s newspaper, and his work caught the attention of Stars and Stripes. That newspaper began publishing his cartoons in 1943, and formally added him to its staff in 1944. Mauldin covered the fighting in Sicily and Italy, was wounded during the fighting around Salerno, and after D-Day, he was sent to France and accompanied the advancing GIs into Germany.
While working for Stars and Stripes, Mauldin created Willie and Joe, two front-line GIs who frequently found themselves caught between the horrors of war and the frequently ridiculous expectations and directives of the Army’s chain of command. The irrepressible duo thus struggled from one cartoon to the next in order to triumph over both the Wehrmacht and their own rear echelon. However, not everybody was a fan of Willie and Joe, and the detractors included George S. Patton, who neither liked Mauldin nor his cartoon creations. Not least because Willie and Joe’s slovenly appearance went against the soldierly spit-and-polish image fetishized by Patton. More importantly, the cartoons made pointed jabs at the unrealistic fatuousness of the military hierarchy, including a cartoon ridiculing a directive from Patton that troops be clean-shaven at all times. In short, Patton viewed Willie and Joe as detrimental to morale and discipline.
