Robert Edsel's Blog

One of the many joys of serving as a trustee of the National World War II Museum is the occasional touching email I received which grabs the heartstrings and reminds all people of good will why we honor these heroes who contributed to winning World War II.

This story was written by persons unknown. If anyone does know who wrote it please let us know and we’ll more specifically credit the piece.

Bill Mauldin stamp honors grunts’  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’s going to happen this month: Bill Mauldin is getting his own postage  stamp.

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 were their laughs, his heartaches were their heartaches.  He was one of them. They loved him.

He never held back. Sometimes,  when his cartoons cut too close for comfort, his superior officers tried to  tone him down. In one memorable incident, he enraged Gen. George S. Patton,  and Patton informed Mauldin he wanted the pointed cartoons — celebrating  the fighting men, lampooning the high-ranking officers — to stop.  Now.

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  himself or herself, the story of Mauldin’s young manhood will humble you.  Here is what, by the time he was 23 years old, Mauldin had  accomplished:

He won the Pulitzer Prize. He 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 he grew older, he never lost that boyish Mauldin grin, he  never outgrew his excitement about doing his job, he 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 copyboy. That impish look on his face  remained.

He had achieved so much. He had 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 that he was still their hero.

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 that  Bill would not feel so alone. Soon more than 10,000 letters and cards had  arrived at Mauldin’s bedside.

Even better than that, the old soldiers  began to show up just to sit with Mauldin, to let him know that they were  there for him, as he, 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.”

Mauldin is buried  in Arlington National Cemetery . This month, the kid  cartoonist makes 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 are keeping 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.