Butting heads.
By 1944, Bill Mauldin’s “Willie and Joe” cartoons were appearing six times a week in the Stars and Stripes military newspaper.
Willie and Joe were bedraggled, ordinary Americans coping with the mud, tedium and fear of the infantryman serving on the front lines in Europe.
The cartoons were popular with the troops and had the support of the War Department.
But some Army officers considered Willie and Joe bad for good order and discipline.
And no one resented them more than Gen. George Patton, the commander of America’s Third Army.
Patton’s men were to shave daily, keep their boots and helmets polished, and wear neckties.
Willie and Joe were disheveled and dirty.
They looked exhausted and sometimes fearful.
The opposite of Patton’s image of a good soldier.
When word of Patton’s seething reached Eisenhower’s headquarters, a meeting between Patton and Mauldin was arranged.
Mauldin described it later:
“There he sat, big as life...
“His hair was silver, his face was pink, his collar and shoulders glittered with more stars than I could count, his fingers sparkled with rings,
“an incredible mass of ribbons started around desktop level and spread upward in a flood over his chest…
“Beside him, lying in a big chair, was Willie, the bull terrier.
“If ever a dog was suited to his master this one was...
“I stood in that door staring into the four meanest eyes I’d ever seen.
Patton harangued Mauldin for forty-five minutes:
"Now then, sergeant… [y]ou know goddamn well you're not drawing an accurate representation of the American soldier.
'“You make them look like goddamn bums.
“The krauts ought to pin a medal on you for helping them mess up discipline for us."
Mauldin sputtered a brief response and then left.
Nothing was resolved.
And the Stars and Stripes continued to publish Willie and Joe cartoons.
Mauldin was awarded the Pulitzer Prize a few months later and his character Willie appeared on the cover of Time Magazine.
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I’ll see you tomorrow.
— Brenda
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