(See Cover)
Willie was born, full-grown, during the Italian campaign.
He needed a shave and his clothes hung in weary folds on his weary frame. Even on his day of creation, his thick fingers were curved, as though from grasping a pick handle or an M-1 rifle. He did not smile then and he has never smiled since.
Willie was born into the 45th Infantry Division, where his creator, Private Bill Mauldin, also served. Willie had a sidekick, Joe. Together Willie and Joe slogged from Italy to Germany.
Willie and Joe were citizen soldiers. Before their incarnation, they had presumably been peaceful citizens. Now they were veterans of war's hardships, its filth, discomforts and agonizing boredom. War was bad weather and soaking clothes, cold rations and no letters from home. War was mile after mile of tramping, getting just as tired advancing as retreating, sleeping in barns, bathing in icy rivers, scrounging for small comforts.
War was getting drunk on grappa manufactured in stills made from wrecked airplane parts; reading with vacant eyes the labels on K-ration tins or even German propaganda leaflets, just to be reading.
War was praying between artillery barrages; pitying the starved Italian children and the Italian women standing in the midst of their ruined homes. War was watching their friends die, one after the other, day after day after day. War was learning the ecstasy of wiggling a little finger just to see it move and know that you were still alive. War was hell.
Willie and Joe were combat infantrymen.
In any army's vast organization, combat infantrymen are the hundreds of thousands (among the many millions) who are always in the front lines and who carry the dirtiest, heaviest burden of any war. They are the heroes whom the Army this week honors on Infantry Day (June 15)—the anniversary of the day that George Washington was named commander in chief of the Continental Army. Through Willie and Joe, Soldier-Artist Bill Mauldin has honored them in his own way.
Not Broad-Minded. Willie and Joe, speaking their sardonic mouthfuls, usually say what youthful Bill Mauldin himself has to say on the subject of war. But in a book (Up Front, published this week) written around them, Mauldin has added further remarks, for the benefit of those civilians who find Willie and Joe a little bewildering. He explains: "I haven't tried to picture this war in a big, broad-minded way. I'm not old enough to understand what it's all about."
His book is a text (some 30,000 words) to some 160 of his pictures. It throws sharp light on cartoons which are serious and gay, ribald and sentimental, tough, touching and bitter—the best cartoons to come out of the war.
Up Front, which is like a long letter home, sets forth some of Bill Mauldin's favorite gripes, which are the gripes of all infantrymen. Among them: revulsion at "spit & polish" in the field; envy of rear-echelon men who take over the towns after the infantrymen have captured them, occupy all the best spots and drink all the liquor; disdain for brass hats full of arrogance and stuffing.