Genuine G.I.

Sergeant George Baker's "Sad Sack" is a hilarious caricature. But Sergeant Bill Mauldin's weary, grimy, unshaven "Joe," the "Old Bill" of World War II, is by G.I. testimony grimly true to life. Quiet, babyfaced, 23-year-old Cartoonist Mauldin can draw the infantryman truthfully because he has been one himself since he was 18. He has fought and drawn his way through the campaign in Sicily, wears the Purple Heart for wounds received in Italy. "Joe" is beside, behind and ahead of him right now on the southern front in France.

The Army and the U.S. home front have been quick to appreciate Mauldin's veracity. First the 45th Division News, then the Army Times, the Stars & Stripes and the Yank printed his cartoons. He became a G.I. favorite overnight. When Ernie Pyle called Mauldin the finest cartoonist produced by the war, United Feature's George Carlin promptly signed him to a long-term contract. His saturnine "Up Front with Mauldin" is now syndicated to over 100 U.S. civilian newspapers.

He Learns about War. Farm-born in New Mexico's Sacramento Mountains, Bill Mauldin started drawing when he was three. At eight, he moved with his mother and brother to a homestead near Phoenix, Ariz., at nine wrote an anti-war poem. He got his first job as an artist at twelve, drawing posters for a rodeo. While in high school at Phoenix, he took a correspondence course in cartooning, sold his first cartoon for $10. He left high school without graduating, went to Chicago, worked variously as a truck driver, dishwasher and menu designer to pay for his studies at the Art Institute of Chicago. He entered the Army from the Arizona National Guard in 1940, got married while a private in a Texas camp. His wife, Jean, and a son he has never seen live in Phoenix.

"Joe" has kept pace with his creator in the process of becoming a soldier. From an average, homely rookie, surprised at being jolted out of his civilian rights, he has slowly hardened into the seemingly resigned, latently hopeful man he is. In battle his hatred for MPs has softened, because MPs also die. His enthusiasm for undermining the "officer system" has waned. He studiously avoids talk of fear and death. He knows that his only reward for pushing the enemy back over one cold, rocky mountain is a chance to push him over the next one.

And Hates It. Syndicator Carlin says "Joe" lives because Mauldin's native integrity has made him shun the vaudeville or adventure-story techniques that rob other comic war heroes of reality. Mauldin's explanation is simpler. He says "Joe" is just the average U.S. combat soldier, leading a life he hates so bitterly that he is fighting a war to get it over with.

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