He won the first of his two Pulitzer Prizes for editorial cartooning in 1945, at age 23. Mauldin's cartoons also were published during the war, and with the help of correspondent Ernie Pyle, his work was syndicated in American papers. 'If he is looking very weary and resigned to the fact that he is probably going to die before it is over, and if he has a deep, almost hopeless desire to go home and forget it all if he looks with dull, uncomprehending eyes at the fresh-faced kid who is talking about all the joys of battle and killing Germans, then he comes from the same infantry as Joe and Willie,' Mauldin wrote.Ĭollections of Sgt. Mauldin said his characters were typical of 'infantry soldiers who have been in the war for a couple of years.' Patton, the Third Army commander who tried unsuccessfully to order him to spruce up his characters. Willie and Joe's laconic observations on warfare were tolerated and even admired by some officers, including Gen. His depictions of the boredom, wretchedness and muted rebellion of average GIs against bad rations and fatuous officers were widely appreciated among the lower ranks and endeared him to Americans at home. Mauldin drew for the military paper Stars & Stripes and the 45th Division News while serving as an Army sergeant in Europe. He had Alzheimer's disease, pneumonia and other ailments. 22 at a nursing home in Newport Beach, Calif. Bill Mauldin, 81, the editorial cartoonist whose muddy, sarcastic dogface characters Willie and Joe were icons for the GIs of World War II, died Jan.

Bill Mauldin in Korea by Bill Mauldin