[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 163 (Tuesday, November 11, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S14441-S14442]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                        TRIBUTE TO BILL MAULDIN

  Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, today on Veterans Day, we are reminded of 
the sacrifices of all those who have served in our Armed Forces. We 
honor them, we remember them, and we thank them.
  Today I would like to talk about a veteran who proudly served in 
World War II, a veteran who died this past year, and a veteran who has, 
I think, great meaning for those who served in World War II. He was a 
soldier who told the stories of World War II through these drawings. 
That man, of course, is Bill Mauldin. He is remembered for depicting in 
his cartoons the average World War II soldier, the person who was doing 
his job, just trying to survive, trying to get home; the average World 
War II soldier who won the war; the average soldier to whom we all owe 
so much.
  While Bill Mauldin was depicting the soldier of that generation, in a 
sense he was depicting all those who serve and who have ever served.
  Bill Mauldin passed away on January 22 of this year at the age of 81 
following a courageous battle against Alzheimer's disease.
  World War II veterans felt and continue to feel an attachment to Bill 
Mauldin because he really seemed to understand what a typical GI was

[[Page S14442]]

going through, and his drawings depicted that. Bill Mauldin's work as a 
military and civilian cartoonist and writer brought a spirited, 
insightful, and human touch to the issues and people whom he covered. 
He is perhaps best known for two of the cartoon characters he created, 
Willie and Joe, whose adventures took them across various battlefields 
of World War II.
  Willie and Joe were both young enlistees on the front lines of 
combat, very much like Mr. Mauldin himself, a 1940 callup to the Army 
from the Arizona National Guard who spent a considerable amount of time 
in the North African and European battle theaters.
  Willie and Joe were not the straight-edged soldiers we often find in 
official wartime publications or Hollywood films. Rather, these two 
cartoon heroes lived the lives of men defined by the difficult 
surroundings and tasks at hand during World War II--soldiers resolved 
to give their all in the few matters they could control and resigned to 
hope for the best in those which they could not.
  I think the late historian Stephen Ambrose said it best in the 
introduction to a re-issue of Mauldin's widely read post-war cartoon 
compilation entitled ``Up Front.'' According to Ambrose, Bill Mauldin's 
cartoons ``caught on and live on because in them everything is 
accurate. . . . Willie and Joe's boots and smelly socks, their baggy, 
dirty uniforms, their knives, rifles, ammunition, mortars, web belts, 
canteens, beards, haversacks, helmets (with crease marks or holes), the 
rations--this is how it was.''
  Ambrose really got it right. Mauldin's unique ability to capture the 
young soldier's perspective on day-to-day life during the war in an 
inclusive and patriotic manner earned his work the distinction of 
regular publication in numerous military newspapers, including Stars 
and Stripes and the 45th Division News. His work also won him the 
respect of fellow soldiers across the globe, one of whom recently 
described Willie and Joe as ``a secret weapon on our side.''
  Willie and Joe were featured in Mauldin's first post-war compilation 
of cartoons and essays entitled ``Back Home.'' The success ``Back 
Home'' had in bookstores across the country propelled Mauldin to even 
greater fame, winning him the opportunity to publish several more works 
and even act in a few motion pictures.
  In fact, Mauldin is so well respected that in 1945, at the age of 23, 
he received a Pulitzer Prize soon after Time magazine featured him on 
its cover. Following the conclusion of World War II, Mauldin began a 
career as a political cartoonist for several major U.S. newspapers, 
including the Chicago Sun-Times and then the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 
stirring up high-profile issues along the way. He won a second Pulitzer 
Prize in 1959 for a cartoon he drew depicting the Soviet Union's harsh 
treatment of renowned writer and Nobel Prize winner Boris Pasternak. 
Bill Mauldin has touched my generation with one of his most famous 
drawings, a drawing I certainly remember and I know anyone in my 
generation remembers. It was a drawing from now what has been 40 years 
ago of a statue of Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial with his 
face cupped in his hand, weeping, following the assassination of 
President John F. Kennedy.
  I will not forget that image, and I am sure there are many Members of 
the Senate and across this country who will not forget that, either.
  Bill Mauldin was a creative, artistic genius who could capture so 
much about people and the human condition in the simplicity of his 
drawings. He could capture in those cartoons what words alone could 
not. Bill Mauldin had the gift and he used it well. On Veterans Day 
this year, we should thank Bill Mauldin for that gift and for his 
service to our Nation, for what he did to represent in drawings the 
average GI in World War II--and in a sense the average GI throughout 
our long history as a country--for what he did to communicate to so 
many the way life was for our troops.
  I would also like to take this opportunity to send that same message 
of thanks on this Veterans Day to all of our current and former service 
men and women. Whether on the islands of the South Pacific, in the air 
over France, or on land in France or in Germany, on the beaches of 
Sicily, the mountains in Korea, the jungles of Vietnam, the deserts of 
Kuwait, more recently in the caves of Afghanistan or the streets of 
Baghdad, our service men and women have defended America and they 
defended our values with great valor. We must never forget that 
veterans served for us, they served for our children, for our 
grandchildren, and for future generations not yet born.
  Today on this Veterans Day our service men and women continue to 
serve around the world. We pause again tonight to thank our veterans, 
thank those who have served in the past, and to remember our service 
men and women who are serving at this very hour tonight.

                          ____________________