Thanks again, Jack!
http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/03/07/greene.mauldin.stamp/index.html
My younger son, Jeff, a Grandview Heights teacher and a Dublin Jerome football assistant coach, coaches those dumb old linemen which you once were, has taken an interest in WWII and the people who served us. Gib always touted the linemen as the ones to make the team go even though the backs got all the press. I have Bill Maudlin's "Up Front" which I am giving him to read along with a couple of Ernie Pyle books.
Don't we know who America's heroes truly are! I was not up front with them, but for the will of God and Army orders, I might have been. I was in the battles of Tokyo during and after the Korean "police action' from 1953 trhrough 1954.
Sam
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jack H Plymale" jackh.plymale@gmail.com
To: ">" <@smtp109.sbc.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Bill Mauldin stamp honors grunts' hero.
The post office gets a lot of criticism. Always has, always will.
And with the renewed push to get rid of Saturday mail delivery,
expect complaints to intensify.
But the United States Postal Service deserves a standing ovation
for something that happened last month: Bill Mauldin got his own
postage stamp.
Mauldin died at age 81 in the early days of 2003. The end of his
life had been rugged. He had been scalded in a bathtub, which led to
terrible injuries and infections; Alzheimer's disease was inflicting
its cruelties. Unable to care for himself after the scalding, he
became a resident of aCalifornia nursing home, his health and spirits
in rapid decline.
He was not forgotten, though. Mauldin, and his work, meant so
much to the millions of Americans who fought in World War II, and to
those who had waited for them to come home. He was a kid cartoonist
for Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper; Mauldin's drawings of
his muddy, exhausted, whisker-stubbled infantrymen Willie and Joe
were the voice of truth about what it was like on the front lines.
Mauldin was an enlisted man just like the soldiers he drew for;
his gripes were their gripes, his laughs were their laughs, his
heartaches were their heartaches. He was one of them. They loved him.
He never held back. Sometimes, when his cartoons cut too close
for comfort, his superior officers tried to tone him down. In one
memorable incident, he enraged Gen. George S. Patton, and Patton
informed Mauldin he wanted the pointed cartoons -- celebrating the
fighting men, lampooning the high-ranking officers -- to stop. Now.
"I'm beginning to feel like a fugative from th' law of averages."
The news passed from soldier to soldier. How was Sgt. Bill
Mauldin going to stand up to Gen. Patton? It seemed impossible.
Not quite. Mauldin, it turned out, had an ardent fan: Five-star
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied forces in
Europe . Ike put out the word: Mauldin draws what Mauldin wants.
Mauldin won. Patton lost.
If, in your line of work, you've ever considered yourself a young
hotshot, or if you've ever known anyone who has felt that way about
himself or herself, the story of Mauldin's young manhood will humble
you. Here is what, by the time he was 23 years old, Mauldin had
accomplished:
"By the way, wot wuz them changes you wuz gonna make
when you took over last month, sir?"
He won the Pulitzer Prize. He was featured on the cover of Time
magazine. His book "Up Front" was the No. 1 best-seller in the United
States .
All of that at 23. Yet when he returned to civilian life and he
grew older, he never lost that boyish Mauldin grin, he never outgrew
his excitement about doing his job, he never big-shotted or
high-hatted the people with whom he worked every day.
I was lucky enough to be one of them; Mauldin roamed the hallways
of theChicago Sun-Times in the late 1960s and early 1970s with no
more officiousness or air of haughtiness than if he was a copyboy.
That impish look on his face remained.
He had achieved so much. He had won a second Pulitzer Prize, and
he should have won a third, for what may be the single greatest
editorial cartoon in the history of the craft: his deadline rendering,
on the day President John F. Ken nedy was assassinated, of the statue
at the Lincoln Memorial slumped in grief, its head cradled in its
hands. But he never acted as if he was better than the people he met.
He was still Mauldin the enlisted man.
During the late summer of 2002, as Mauldin lay in that California
nursing home, some of the old World War II infantry guys caught wind
of it. They didn't want Mauldin to go out that way. They thought he
should know that he was still their hero.
"This is th' town my pappy told me about."
Gordon Dillow, a columnist for the Orange County Register, put
out the call in Southern California for people in the area to send
their best wishes to Mauldin; I joined Dillow in the effort, helping
to spread the appeal nationally so that Bill would not feel so alone.
Soon more than 10,000 letters and cards had arrived at Mauldin's
bedside.
Even better than that, the old soldiers began to show up just to
sit with Mauldin, to let him know that they were there for him, as
he, long ago, had been there for them. So many volunteered to visit
Bill that there was a waiting list. Here is how Todd DePastino, in
the first paragraph of his wonderful biography of Mauldin, described
it:
"Almost every day in the summer and fall of 2002 they came to
Park Superior nursing home in Newport Beach , California , to honor
Army Sergeant, Technician Third Grade, Bill Mauldin. They came bearing
relics of their youth: medals, insignia, photographs, and carefully
folded newspaper clippings. Some wore old garrison caps. Others
arrived resplendent in uniforms over a half century old. Almost all
of them wept as they filed down the corridor like pilgrims fulfilling
some long-neglected obligation."
One of the veterans explained to me why it was so important:
"You would have to be part of a combat infantry unit to
appreciate what moments of relief Bill gave us. You had to be reading
a soaking wet Stars and Stripes in a water-filled foxhole and then
see one of his cartoons."
"Th' hell this ain't th' most important hole in the world. I'm in it."
Mauldin is buried in Arlington National Cemetery . Last month,
the kid cartoonist made it onto a first-class postage stamp. It's an
honor that most generals and admirals never receive.
What Mauldin would have loved most, I believe, is the sight of
the two guys who are keeping him company on that stamp.
Take a look at it.
There's Willie. There's Joe.
And there, to the side, drawing them and smiling that shy,
quietly observant smile, is Mauldin himself. With his buddies, right
where he belongs. Forever.
--
Jack P.
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