General Patton kicking a GI cartoon

mauldin
Try this hyperlink and the hyperlinks within it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Mauldin

Thanks for the lead, but been there, done that. Nothing.

I'm still searching for you, too. no luck yet.

I generally associate Bill Mauldin with the Italian campaign and occupation. This doesn't sound like his stuff anyway.

On a troop ship, the officers wanted him to come up with a cartoon for the mess, or whatever they call an officers' mess in the Navy. He gave them a drawing of two portholes with Joe and Willy looking longingly into the mess. I do not believe they ever displayed it, but this is more the Mauldin spirit.

it WAS bill mauldin, definitely. Please read the links. The issue is where is the cartoon.

Didn't say it wasn't. Said it didn't sound like him. I don't usually follow links, but thanks for the advice.

Just thought I'd pop in to tell you that my Mum was an extra in that film! You can see her walking across the street arm in arm with a friend. Part of it was filmed in Knutsford (Cheshire). Mum recalls getting paid LOADS of money for it.

x

I remember the scene, as the ladies gathered to hear Patton when he committed his famous gaffe of omission with regard to the Russians.

I thought the prior links that I posted had Mauldin as the one attributed to the editorial cartoon. I'll reread those links, but I see no one else (other than Herbloc) as having the stature to write such an editorial and to subsequently be published at that time. The slapping incidents occurred in Italy.

So far, I got this in research:

"In the month of November, 1943, Drew Pearson broadcast the story of Patton and his slapping of two American soldiers. Disregarding the fact that many other correspondents and news media people knew of the incidents and that the story was three months old, Pearson claimed the story as his own, personal "scoop". Pearson's broadcast, of course, created quite a sensation throughout the United States. Some Senators and Congressmen, upon hearing the broadcast, clamored for the dismissal of General Patton purely on the grounds of Pearson's allegations, not waiting for any evidence nor the complete facts of the story. One congressman went as far as to compare Patton to Hitler and one newspaper ran a political cartoon of Patton in which the General bore a remarkable resemblance to 'Der Fuhrer'."

theodoc wrote:



Yes! That's the one, she has photos and autographs from the set.

smorgs : we're not talking about the same editorial cartoon:

The following is an excerpt from script the movie 'Patton'':

Bradley: (with good humor) And now they draw cartoons about you.

Patton: The dirty bastard! They've got me holding a little GI there and kicking him with an iron boot. Do you see that, what's on my boot! A swastika! On my boot, an iron boot with a swastika on it! (reading from letter) "You will apologize to the soldier you slapped, to all the medical personnel in the tent at the time, to every patient in the tent who can be reached, and last but not least the Seventh Army as a whole, through individual units, one at a time ." God, I feel alone.

How could such a famous cartton not be ANYWHERE? I recall having seen it myself some years ago!

I've asked myself the same question. It definitely appears in the movie, in a newspaper called "The Daily Chronicle," on the editorial page. I think it's safe to say that it is NOT drawn by Bill Mauldin, as the style is rather crude.

Have you seen it in any place besides the movies?

Thanks for your response!

There is a very good and simple reason nobody can find that cartoon other than in context of the movie.

Georgie Patton didn't like Bill Mauldin, who cordially returned the contempt. Mauldin actually had joined the 45th Division before the war, and so he was with them in North Africa and Italy. Willie and Joe evolved from characters who he had created before he got overseas, and his appeal to the common GI was based on the desire of the publishers of the 45th division newsletter to appeal to a wide circulation in the years before the war.

This is important, because Mauldin already was infected with the populist type of home-grown socialism common in America in the 1930s before he ever got overseas, and his characters Willie and Joe were "the common man" as seen in the 1930s, such as Steinbeck's characters in Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath.

Both Up Front and Back Home were available in the small town library of the little berg in which i grew up. I checked them out, and i read them again and again in the library itself. I know those cartoons inside and out. There is only one cartoon of Patton. It shows a little man seated behind a huge desk in a huge office. That is a subtlety of insult which only the infantryman could really appreciate.

In Patton's Third Army, anyone not actually on the firing line was required to appear in the full uniform, including the tie which was a part of the "class C" uniform at that time. Mauldin showed up in France, and wasn't wearing a tie, got busted for it, and mouthed off about Patton. Patton called him in, and chewed him out. Mauldin drew his cartoon. I cannot assert as an iron-clad truth that Mauldin never drew a cartoon showing Patton kicking a GI--but i think it's bullshit, and i will say that it absolutely does not appear in Up Front or Back Home, and it would not even be Mauldin's style.

His most famous cartoon about officers, and one which got him in some mild trouble in Italy, was one in which two officers are looking at what appears to be a beautiful sunset (for as much as one could tell in a black and white cartoon), and one turns to the other and says: "Beautiful . . . do they have something like this for the enlisted men?" By and large, officers don't show up in Mauldin's cartoons, which were focused on the GIs, the "grunts" in the mud and the blood at the front. One of the few other cartoons he drew in which an officer appears shows a GI with his head down, and an officer standing in the open, with his hands behind his back. The GI is saying something to the effect of "Sir, could you stand somewhere else while you're inspiring us? You're drawing fire." Another shows the "sad sack" GIs, Willy and Joe, confronted by an immaculately dressed officer who has apparently upbraided them for being "out of uniform," and Joe is saying: "Them buttons was shot off when i took this town, Sir."

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Here, i've found some images from Up Front, so that one can get the flavor of Mauldin's style:



Irony was a big part of his humor.



This is more like the image Mauldin usually showed of officers--men as tired, dirty, unshaven and ragged as their men.



I just added this because it's one of my personal favorites.



This is also more typical of how Mauldin portrayed officers.



The officers Mauldin typically portrayed were on the firing line with the men.



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Patton kicking a GI just wouldn't be the Mauldin style. By the way, Patton was reprimanded for slapping a soldier, not for kicking a soldier.

For God's sake, say!

Thanks for the stories and pics, Setanta. I haven't seen a Mauldin book since I was about twenty or so.

Note: Mauldin played a GI with Audie Murphy, in To Hell and Back.