Book Alert / Bill Mauldin -- A Life Up Front

Bill Mauldin -- A Life Up Front by Todd DePastino, Norton '08, $27.95, 370 pages, ISBN #0393061833. Index, source notes, no bibliography, b&w images sprinkled through text.

If a picture's worth 1,000 words, World War II cartoonist Bill Mauldin may have written more than all the great military historians. Let those scholars cozy up to the generals; the self-described New Mexico desert rat was more than content in a foot soldier's foxhole.

As Waynesburg (PA) College Prof. Todd DiPastino writes, Mauldin had a strong contrarian streak since boyhood and never took easily to authority. Looking back to an era whose byword was "Loose lips sink ships," it's remarkable that he got away with criticizing the top brass as much as he did. Perhaps that's because the jibes were comparatively mild: Two GIs undergoing an interminable wait for their replacements, and one says, "I don't remember no delays gittin' us overseas."

Not to say Mauldin escaped the wrath of the generals entirely. Gen. George Patton once threatened to "throw his ass in jail" for drawing cartoons that threatened to lower troop morale. But for thousands of troops, Mauldin's "Up Front" cartoon in the pages of Stars and Stripes was a welcome break in the tension and monotony of wartime.