McFreedom

Most people probably heard the news last week that Bill Mauldin died. Mr. Mauldin was a cartoonist. While he had a long, civilian career - netting a Pullitzer in 1962 - he's probably most famous for the cartoons he drew during World War II, which got him his first Pullitzer, in 1945.

Mr. Mauldin was a grunt who started drawing cartoons chronicling the adventures of two other grunts, the fictional Willie and Joe. The pair is almost always dishevled and tired, and often wet, besides. It was a strong counterpoint to the propaganda of the day, and annoyed many officers with its bottom-up view when it was published in the Stars and Stripes.

Mr. Mauldin stayed an infantryman, and much of Willie and Joe's adventures are patterned after his own experiences as an infrantryman in Italy. Stars and Stripes paid Mr. Mauldin for his work, which means they own copyright. I believe that, since the government owns Stars and Stripes, that means these works are in the public domain, so I am going to reproduce them, here, over the next few weeks.

I believe that these are in vaguely chronological order:

"... forever, Amen. Hit the dirt."

Which requires little comment from me, except to point out the "Anzio" by his signature, and the date "6-6." Mr. Mauldin drew this in Anzio, Italy on June 6, 1944, which was D-Day over in France, although he surely didn't know that at the time. He'd just been part of the bloody Battle of Anzio.

The Battle of Anzio begain on January 22, 1944. Italy surrendered in September of 1943, but the German forces which had been assisting the Italians continued to fight on. Italy was cut east-to-west by the Gustav Line, and Allied forces were moving slowly up the penninsula. A plan was hatched for a sea-landing at Anzio, north of the Gustav line, to flank the Germans. The initial landing went well, and the Germans had few reserves. A quick push from the beach would've punched through their lines and almost certainly been decisive. Sadly, Major General General John Lucas, the American commander of the joint US/British force, decided to consolidate the beachhead before moving forward. This gave the Germans an opportunity to consolidate their defense, and by the time the Allies tried to push onward on January 30, the German resistance was extremely strong. The Anzio campaign was unable to meet its goals; the beach was only linked back with Allied forces in May of 1944 only when the original Allied force broke the Gustav line. The Allies sustained 66,000 casualties.

One of the side-dramas of Anzio was the battle for Cassino. Mr. Mauldin was working on a cartoon during a lull, and was wounded by shrapnel from a mortar shell. He walked to an aid station, where a medic removed the fragments and gave him a purple heart. He later turned this experience into a cartoon (that I, sadly, do not have) where Joe is sitting, customarily slouched, in front of a medic. "Just gimme th' aspirin. I already got a Purple Heart," he says.