There are no cartoons like Bill Mauldin's Willys and Joes. Sergeant Bill Mauldin, no less. Those looks of the Willys and Joes and the ordinary screw ups of soldiers in everyday existence always made me smile. I recently read a review of his life.
An aside: The fact that Bill ended his life with Alzheimer's is sad as it is for all who do. Why we can't end this disease is beyond me. To put a machine on Mars and not find something for this debilitating illness is way beyond me. Help!
Here's something in the review which is a wonderful tribute to him. "With compassion and precision, the military presents the widow or widower of its fallen fighting men and women a folded flag and thanks of a grateful nation. At every such burial an everyman folk hero is crafted from a lost life. Mauldin's characteristic skepticism of war's heroic commemorations may be more telling. Asked to comment on Tom Brokaw's enormously popular homage to the men and women of the Greatest Generation, Maudin blew his own version of Taps: 'They were human beings, they had their weaknesses and their flaws and their good sides and bad sides. The one thing they had in common was they were a little too young to die.' "
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