‘It’s really good that he’s not suffering anymore,” he said. “He had a terrible struggle.”
His characters Willie and Joe, a laconic pair of unshaven, mud-encrusted dogfaces, slogged their way through Italy and other parts of battle-scarred Europe, surviving the enemy and the elements while caustically and sarcastically harpooning the unctuous and pompous.
Somewhere I have a complete book of the Willie and Joe cartoons. As an anti-Vietnam war protest leader, my memory of those cartoons, and the humane eye and hand of their creator is what made sure I stayed connected to my peers who wore uniforms.
We all owe a lot to our soldiers; I want to thank Bill Mauldin for teaching me that above all, they are us.