Get out your history
books and open them to the chapter on World War II. Today's
lesson will cover a little known but very important hero of whom very
little was ever really known. Here is another
important piece of lost US history, which is a true example of our
American Spirit.
Makes ya' proud
to put this stamp on your envelopes........
Bill
Mauldin stamp honors grunt's hero. The post
office gets a lot of criticism. Always has, always will. And with the
renewed push to get rid of Saturday
mail delivery, expect complaints to intensify.
But the United States
Postal Service deserves a standing ovation
for something that happened last month:
Bill Mauldin got his own
postage stamp. (Issue Date: 03/31/2010).
Mauldin died at age 81
in the early days of 2003. The end
of his life had been rugged. He had been scalded in a
bathtub, which led to terrible injuries and infections;
Alzheimer's disease was inflicting its cruelties. Unable to care for
himself after the scalding, he became a resident of a California
nursing home, his health and spirits in rapid decline
He was not
forgotten, though. Mauldin, and his work, meant so much to
the millions of Americans who fought in World War II, and
to those who had waited for them to come home. He was a kid
cartoonist for Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper;
Mauldin's drawings of his muddy, exhausted, whisker-stubbled
infantrymen Willie and Joe were the voice of truth about what it
was like on the front lines.
Mauldin was an
enlisted man just like the soldiers he drew for; his gripes were
their gripes, his laughs their laughs, his heartaches their
heartaches. He was one of them. They loved him.
He never held back.
Sometimes, when his cartoons cut too close for comfort, superior
officers tried to tone him down. In one memorable incident, he enraged
Gen. George S. Patton, who informed Mauldin he wanted the pointed
cartoons celebrating the fighting men, lampooning the high-ranking
officers to stop. Now!
"I'm beginning to feel like a
fugitive from the 'law of averages."
The news passed from
soldier to soldier. How was Sgt. Bill Mauldin going to
stand up to Gen. Patton? It seemed impossible.
Not quite. Mauldin,
it turned out, had an ardent fan: Five-star Gen. Dwight D.
Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe. Ike put
out the word: Mauldin draws what Mauldin wants. Mauldin
won. Patton lost.
If, in your line of work,
you've ever considered yourself a young hotshot, or if you've ever
known anyone who has felt that way about him or herself, the story of
Mauldin's young manhood will humble you. Here is what, by
the time he was 23 years old, Mauldin accomplished:
"By the way, wot
wuz them changes you wuz
Gonna make when you
took over last month, sir?"
He won the Pulitzer
Prize, was featured on the cover of Time magazine. His book "Up
Front" was the No. 1 best-seller in the United States.
All of that at 23.
Yet, when he returned to civilian life and grew older, he never lost
that boyish Mauldin grin, never outgrew his excitement about doing his
job, never big-shotted or high-hatted the people with whom he worked
every day.
I was lucky
enough to be one of them.. Mauldin roamed the hallways of the
Chicago Sun-Times in the late 1960s and early 1970s with no more
officiousness or air of haughtiness than if he was a
copy boy. That impish look on his face remained.
He had achieved so
much. He won a second Pulitzer Prize, and he should have
won a third for what may be the single greatest editorial cartoon in
the history of the craft: his deadline rendering, on the day
President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, of the statue at the
Lincoln Memorial slumped in grief, its head cradled in its hands.
But he never acted as if he was better than the people he
met. He was still Mauldin, the enlisted man.
During the late summer of
2002, as Mauldin lay in that California nursing home, some of the old
World War II infantry guys caught wind of it. They didn't want
Mauldin to go out that way. They thought he should know he
was still their hero.
"This is the' town
my pappy told me about."
Gordon Dillow, a
columnist for the Orange County Register, put out the call in Southern
California for people in the area to send their best wishes to
Mauldin. I joined Dillow in the effort, helping to spread the
appeal nationally, so Bill would not feel so alone. Soon,
more than 10,000 cards and letters had arrived at Mauldin's
bedside.
Better than that, old
soldiers began to show up just to sit with
Mauldin, to let him know that they were there for him, as he, so
long ago, had been there for them. So many volunteered to
visit Bill that there was a waiting list. Here is how Todd
DePastino, in the first paragraph of his wonderful biography of
Mauldin, described it:
"Almost every day in
the summer and fall of 2002 they came to
Park Superior nursing home in Newport Beach, California to honor Army
Sergeant, Technician Third Grade, Bill Mauldin. They came
bearing relics of their youth: medals, insignia, photographs, and
carefully folded newspaper clippings. Some wore old
garrison caps. Others arrived resplendent in uniforms over
a half century old. Almost all of them wept as they filed
down the corridor like pilgrims fulfilling some long-neglected
obligation."
One of the veterans
explained to me why it was so important: "You would have to be
part of a combat infantry unit to appreciate what moments of relief
Bill gave us. You had to be reading a soaking wet Stars and
Stripes in a water-filled foxhole and then see one of his cartoons."
"Th' hell this ain't th' most
important hole in the world. I'm in it."
Mauldin is buried in
Arlington National Cemetery . Last month (03/31/10), the kid
cartoonist made
it onto a first-class postage stamp. It's an honor that most
generals and admirals never receive.
What Mauldin would have loved
most, I believe, is the sight of the two guys who keep him company on
that stamp. Take a look at it. There's Willie. There's Joe.
And there, to the side,
drawing them and smiling that shy, quietly observant smile, is
Mauldin himself. With his buddies, right where he belongs.
Forever.
What a
story, and a fitting tribute to a man and to a time that few of us can
still remember. But I say to you youngsters, you must most
seriously learn of and remember with respect the sufferings and
sacrifices of your fathers, grand fathers and great grandfathers in
times you cannot ever imagine today with all you have. But the
only reason you are free to have it all is because of them. I thought
you would all
enjoy reading and seeing this bit of Americana!
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This page last updated 06/06/2011
