This Military Service Page was created/owned by
Duane Kimbrow-Historian
to remember
Mauldin, William Henry ("Bill"), T/3.
If you knew or served with this Soldier and have additional information or photos to support this Page, please leave a message for the Page Administrator(s) HERE.
Contact Info
Last Address Mountain Park
Date of Passing Jan 22, 2003
Location of Interment Arlington National Cemetery (VLM) - Arlington, Virginia
Bill Mauldin, though trained as a rifleman with the 180th Infantry Regiment, became famous as a cartoonist for the 45th Division News, and then for the Stars and Stripes newspaper, illustrating the life of the combat soldier in WWII.
He was syndicated in more than 100 stateside newspapers in 1944, but it was the series "Up Front ... With Mauldin" that helped Americans to understood what the war was really like. He participated in the invasion of Sicily and then the Italian Campaign.
He was wounded at Monte Cassino by a mortar round which gave him even more credibility. Though well loved by the regular soldier, he created a fierce enemy in General Patton who threatened to "throw his ass in jail" at one point. He also served in France and Germany.
Bill was an author and editorial cartoonist for the Stars and Stripes, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and the Chicago Sun-Times. He also acted in two movies, including John Huston's 1951 movie production of "The Red Badge of Courage."
He was laid to rest on 29 January 2003 in Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia, in Section 64, Grave 6974.
Bill Maudlin, from Up Front (1945): "The surest way to become a pacifist is to join the infantry. I don't make the infantryman look noble, because he couldn't look noble even if he tried. Still there is a certain nobility and dignity in combat soldiers and medical aid men with dirt in their ears. They are rough and their language gets coarse because they live a life stripped of convention and niceties. Their nobility and dignity come from the way they live unselfishly and risk their lives to help each other. They are normal people who have been put where they are, and whose actions and feelings have been molded by their circumstances. There are gentlemen and boors; intelligent ones and stupid ones; talented ones and inefficient ones. But when they are all together and they are fighting, despite their bitching and griping and goldbricking and mortal fear, they are facing cold steel and screaming lead and hard enemies, and they are advancing and beating the hell out of the opposition. They wish to hell they were someplace else, and they wish to hell they would get relief. They wish to hell the mud was dry and they wish to hell their coffee was hot. They want to go home. But they stay in their wet holes and fight, and then they climb out and crawl through minefields and fight some more."
