Bill Mauldin: WWII icon

VFW Magazine, March, 2003

One of the 20th century's greatest cartoonists, Bill Mauldin, died Jan. 22 in Newport Beach, Calif., at 81, from complications of Alzheimer's disease.

Originally a rifleman with the 180th Regt., 45th Inf. Div., Mauldin gained fame as the creator of the characters Willie and Joe in Stars and Stripes. In 1945, he won the Pulitzer Prize for the series Up Front With Mauldin.

After the war, he worked for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch where he won a second Pulitzer in 1959. For 30 years, beginning in 1962, Mauldin was a cartoonist for the Chicago Sun-Times, retiring in 1991 because of a hand injury. During his career, he wrote and illustrated 16 books, as well as acting in two movies.

A mortar wound earned him the Purple Heart and the right to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery.