Two of the most famous soldiers of world war ii were the gis, willie and joe, cartoon characters created by the great bill mauldin. Who were beloved by the servicemen overseas for their frank representation about what it was like to be a grunt at the front. Mauldin knew that. Willie and joes story wasnt going to end when they came home, like the actual war veterans. Our next speaker, Todd Depastino has focused his work on sharing veterans stories with the Veterans Breakfast Club and the biographer of mauldin. We think there is no one better to come and talk about coming home. Before he takes the podium, we will see our next oral history showcase, the 2000 yard stare where veterans discuss their emotional and mental wounds that they brought home with them while also having to readjust to civilian life in the real post war world. Pelalu was the most intense experience of my plooilife. I have never come any wheres near that nor do i ever expect to. It was a living hell from day one. I think the biggest thing that ever happened to me was crossing there. If anybody was ever scared to death, i was. I guess at that time thats why i never expected to make 21. I never wanted off of an island so bad in my life. In combat, there is pucker time and relaxing time. Pelalu, it was all pucker. There was no relaxing time at all. As i crawled along, i saw this huge bunker bigger than this room. I could hear all these nips in there chattering. There was a couple outside that were shouting to them back and forth. They either seen me or knew i was out there. I dont know but i took my a. R. And i let those two guys have the most of that 20 rounds that i could. They had an amateur about 10 feet across, about 1. 5 foot high. I pushed it in in the corner of that and pulled a striker and started the time fuse and i saw a bomb grader about 50 yards away. I made a run for it. Just as i dove in the bomb crater, boom, that whole dam bunker, that side of the bunker just went up. When that was over, there was no more chattering going on inside the bunker. That night, we had an attack by i dont know about a dozen japanese or something came in to our line. This one jap came at me. I had eight rounds in one. So as he came at me, i shot him right through the head. As his rifle came down, it went through the side of my knee and he fell on top of me, because i was below. Blood pouring out of his head. Some got in my mouth. I immediate pimmediately pushed him off. I knew he was dead. We didnt get another attack that night. They set the mortar up a few yards behind and one of them went up and heard some japanese or something. They come back and called for a flame thrower. The thing was about, i guess, 50 to 70foot long. I dont know how many was in there. A bunch of them. Down to the end, there was a sergeant and a couple men. They were laying down on the sand there in the bushes. Smoke, firing japanese come back at the end with fire right on top of them. They was scrambling too. They had a bunch of stuff in there. He was still burning when we left there. If you got around, you can smell it. When flesh is burning, it is a smell you dont ever forget. Our first surgeon, burt, was a redhead. He had a handlebar red mustache. I remember bart. He was standing outside his tent. He had some scissors. He was trimming his mustache. I said, burt, where youre going, it aint going to make no dam difference anyway . Burt turned around. He had 17 years in the core at that time. He was no spring chicken. He turned around and he said, sonny, ill ligt the piss on yor grave. That was burt. When we landed, the first day, i remember jumping across a small trench and looking down. They were laying in the dam trench faceup. There was burt. A dam hole right there. I remember when i jumped across there and saw bart, i thought, by god, you didnt make it, you didnt live to piss on my grave. I can still see him clear as a bell. He was a good boy. Well, at that moment, we were up on the ridge and they kept telling us not to get our head up in the air, because somebody would shoot it off. The captain was a person you didnt tell what to do. He was that kind of a person, thats all. He stuck his head up at the wrong time and somebody popped him. I had blood on my jacket for a long time after that, his. So you know it stuck with me for quite some time. I often wonder why i walked away and others didnt. I can remember when i got shot and came back to the beach for evacuation. It seemed like every ten feet, you was stepping over a body. It was a grave. It was literally carpeted with marines. You dont forget Something Like that. You pretty much makes a dam fatalist out of you. It either is or it isnt. Its the way the dam ball bounce. You dont know what the hell is going to happen. Thats why i say one day at a time. What an honor it is for me to be part of this remarkable event and what a pleasure it is for me to talk about for the first time really bill mauldins back home cartoons instead of his up front car tunes, the cartoons that he did overseas from the front line of europe. And events that happened to mauldin that he did when he returned home from war, but i think the work he did when he returns returned home are on parks is on par in many ways with the work he did overseas in terms of its insight. On june 10, 1945, sergeant bill mauldin returned home from war. He was a celebrity and a millionaire. He catapulted to fame with his drawing hand, penning gritty, sardonic cartoons in stars and stripes that cheered the folks up and taught the folks back home a bit about the in lives of the infantry men and women in europe. Now he had a lucrative deal with a syndicate and a hollywood movie deal. He was on the cover of time magazine, over 300 newspapers around the country carried his cartoons. Agents, politicians, movie stars, Army Generals all clamored for a meeting with the 23yearold sergeant. Even Eleanor Roosevelt demanded that he come by for tea. That wasnt bad for a High School Dropout from rural new mexico who had left home at age 14 at the hited of the great depression. He had joined the Arizona National guard in 1940 because he needed shoes, a new coat, and three meals a day. He would have been rejected for being malnourished and underweight if he had been given a physical, but he never was, so instead he became an infantry rifleman who started cartooning on the side. He really focused on the mud, the marches, the equipment, the mean sergeants in the prepearl harpor army and the men in his Division Just loved him instantly for it. After shipping overseas he was discovered by stars and stripes, which had the largest circulation of any newspaper in the world. He pent 1943 to 1945 traveling the font lines and bearing witness to the hard lives and frequent deaths of those condemned in the foxholes. Wished i could stand up and get some sleep. This cartoon always makes me think of something that snoopy said in peanuts once. You know, if you read the comics on veterans day snoopy was going to go out and quaf a few roolt bears with bill mauldin. In one cartoon, i cant remember the year, somebody asked snoopy why do you love bill mauldin so much, and snoopy says because he drew great mud. His cartoon feature up front by mauldin starring dog faces willy and joe, became a smash hit in europe and unexpectedly as a syndicated feature back home. In may 1945 he won the pulitzer prize, the youngest in history and i think he still is. At the time he had never heard of the prize and an officer had to explain to him, this is a really big deal. Now back home, out of the army and at peace, citizen mauldin faced his future with dread. Im a rookie out there, he said, i went into the army and i knowing in about civilian life. Now he had to meet his real family, his his wife, jean, who he hadnt seen in years and a child, bruce, who he had only seen in photographs. How could he pretend to represent the struggles of ordinary servicemen readjusting to civilian life . I put this one in here just because i think i like it so much. Its willy and joe running into an old officer. Major wilson, bag in uniform, i see. [laughter] it seemed almost blasphemous to have willy and joe survive and carry on. If these guys were real, he said, they would have been dead long ago. His plan had been to kill them on the last day of the war but his editors at stars and stripes forbade it so he approached his new editors at the sinned i canay. Give me some time off, he pleaded the i cant shift overnight from doing combat cartoons to domestic cartoons. The syndicate refused. Mauldin was making them a lot of money and he would be expected to deliver five cartoons a week for the next three years. As it turned out, he had a lot more in common with veterans who had been away from home too long than he would have wished. Today we remember the times square kiss and i ticker tape parade but as bill pointed out at the time, hardly any of the soldiers and sailors partying in the streets on vj day had been overseas. Most dogfaces were still languishing in europe on or heading to the pacific and the lucky few at home stayed away from the parade. This was a commentary on a huge parade thrown for generals patton and doolittle in 1945. You can see willy and joe there and theyre kind of upset because all the bars are closed. Returning soldiers wives might have greeted them with hugs and kisses, but feelings of euphoria faded quickly. More lasting was the awkward silence that grew in the gaps between husbands and wives wartime experienced. Honey, ive only worn it for a week. [laughter] mauldin experienced this awkwardness when he met up with his wife, jean, in los angeles and met his 22monthold son bruce for the first time. I have discovered that two people who have been living alone and apart for two years doing pretty much as they damn please, have a hard time getting together. They butted heads constantly. Jean seemed a stranger and he felt like an intruder. Even more disillusioning for bill was the prejudices jean seemed to share with other husbanded wives who asked why their husbands hadnt made officer grade or why they refused to show off the ribbons once in a while and what about the finery, silk scarves from paris . Other wives had received them. Why hadnt sne this is another one. Her husband spent months shopping for nice things in europe, willy. You never did that for me. Jean noticed willy seemed to be holding back. Jean had secrets of her own dont get so huffy. You talked in your sleep, too. The rubs between husband and wife that informed so many of mauldins early postwar cartoons was but the the leading edge of a gap that grew into a chasm when it came to cock bat veterans. They represented only 10 5 to 10 of uniformed personnel. Ease had relentlessly shown in his willy and joe cartoons, the American Army was really two armies, one that fought and the other that didnt. Up front had chronicled how those farthest removed from combat claimed the lions share of benefits alcohol, ribbons, good clothing, good food, hot baths, black market luxuries and women. Bill was stunned to see this disparity extended to the home front. Soldiers who had never had never ventured to within five miles of the front now demanded free drinks in bars and harassed young civilians like bill who that he queuesed of being 4f. Aint you going buy a war hero a drink . The public, it seemed, had learned nothing from willy and josme the public remained ignorean. Of the wars true nature. Less than four months after he returned home, his home life collapsed under the revelations of their mutual infidelities during the separation. Bill had had girlfriends in europe. Jean had had a boyfriend back home. So jean and bill joined the hundreds of thousands of other couples who made the year 1946 a recordbreaking one for divorce. Never had so many marriages broken up and it would take another 40 years for our nations divorce rate to match that of 1946. Bill and jean had become a statistic. 9 breakup of bills marriage marked a dramatic change in his cartooning. Always a meticulous pin and ink craftsman, bill had spent distressingly little time at the drawing board since coming home and the uneven results showed the neglect. In one, he scolds for not wearing rubbers, you will catch your davegt cold. The very next day though he previewed a new art. In a cartoon some newspapers refused to print, a soldier, face obscured, stands at the victory bar in california. A six hatch marks climb his left sleeve, indicating three years of combat overseas. The bartender tums back to a handwritten sheet taped over the mirror. Snojaps allowed, cant you read signed . He says be of the soldier. Bill saw these guys in italy. The most decorated fighting unit in world war ii history. Racial scrim offended bill to the core. As a dirtdpoor runt from the desert southwest, he faced his share of bullying and prejudice. Its just that i dont like a man being called unequal nell gets a chance to prove his inequality. He would later say. This came at a time of personal crisis when he could no longer bear the compound disillusionments of his homecoming. He needed a crusade to just not only his cartoons but the whole catastrophe of the war to which he had borne such eloquent witness. During the war, willy and joes camaraderie served as partial redemption for the brutalizing conditions of their existence. Now the real willy and joe were in the shadows, misunderstood and overlooked, alienated survivors out of the tens of millions dead. Their sacrifice bill always hated that word and refused to use it seemed for naught in a country that denied equal rights to citieses and deemed to be gearing up for world war iii against erstwhile ally the soviet union. While overseas, mauldin had avoided ideological outbursts and never allowed partisan politics into his cartoons. Back home, however, he jumped into the political fray with both feet. He moved to new york city and began giving speeches, offering interviews and joining all manner of organizations demanding civil rights, free speech, labor recognition, public housing, support for displaced persons in europe. A strong United Nations and a warmer alliance with the soviet union all in the name of redeem 00 the suffering of willy and joe. His cartoons from these four months found many targets for his ire, from conservative pundits and politicians like this one this is a commentary on somebody bill picked out people to hate. He really hated some people and one he really hated was senator bilbo from mississippi. He was a seg regularationist. You can see the sign on the podium says senator balbo. Wheres the communist that throws the egg . And he took owes hiss ire on a media he thought was ginning up a new red scare. And here durning the man in the shotgun is labeled House Unamerican Activities Committee followed by a can you clux klansman and tracking bear prints with a hammer and sickle in them and he says to a bystander, investigate memorandum investigate them in theyre my posse. And after the war, go home, junior, youre making me look silly. As bill increased the term tempo of hits attacks on the conservative right, newspapers began dropping mauldins cartoons. United features syndicates scolded bill that if he wanted to save his career and cans cartoons he would have to straighten up, clean up his act and drop the offensive politics. P such talk only raised bills hackles and changed his occasional political changed his occasional political commentary in an ongoing act of defiance. By february 1946 he was losing papers at a record rate, one a day. United features tried anything and everything to get bill to moderate his messages, but nothing worked. Finally to stop the hemorrhaging. Editors resorted to his contracts small print which permitted them to censor bills drawings and captions as they saw fit. They went to work immediate hi redacting offending words, names, and phrases. Soon the syndicate was making wholesale changes that altered the entire meanings of his cartoons. Ive just selected two here to give you an example. Heres one, the top caption is mauldins original. The syndicate didnt like it and xed that out and rewrote the caption. I dont think i understand that. I read it many times and ive never really gotten it. Heres another example. Its a man giving a speech at a fancy dipper and this is bills original caption. That was replaced. On average, at least one mauldin cartoon a week fell astronomy united features razor, whiteout and blue pencil. This censorship stunned and outraged bill. During his five years in the army he had been censored only only three occasions, each time for drawing a detalede drawing of equipment. He drew too well. Now he found himself effectively silenced for the first time in his life. He had wanted to be a cartoonist since age 11, not only for the promise it held for a naturalborn talent without access to education but because as a child bill possessed a powerful desire to be heard, to thumb his nose at authority and to bring attention to his many grievances. Im touchy, he admitted in years later. If i see a stuffed shirt, i want to punch it. If its big, hit it. You cant do far wrong. Bill hit back hard through 1946. Every time an editor bitched about my drawing a Race Relations cartoon, he later recalled, i drew eight or 10 of them in a row. Bills anger sometimes got the better of his cartoons, turning them into blunt force instruments that lacked subtlety and the satiric insights of his best efforts. Although pill would never admit it, the syndicate editors occasionally improved his drawing by toning down the stridency. Heres an example. He had drawn a nazi eagle and swastika on the door and the syndicate removed that just to allow the readers readers to focus on the door. It says Unamerican Committee for the investigation of activities and the man says wheres that goldurn sign painter . It didnt matter whether the swastika was taken offer the door. Roy howard from scrippshoward took one look at this cartoon and dropped mauldin entirely from the paper. He accused mauldin. He sought him out, wanted to tell him why he says is said you are a communist sympathizer and we cant have that in the paper. Mauldin say himself in the grip of a stifling situation. Your stuff is merchandised and sold like soap with an eye to pleags the greatest number of customers most of the time. You dont fee the greatest number of customers most of the time. You dont fn l the greatest number of customers most of the time. You dont fg l the greatest number of customers most of the time. You dont feeg the greatest number of customers most of the time. You dont fee the greatest number of customers most of the time. You dont feel like you are creating, but you are manufacturing. Instead of distributing instinct, relevant and immediately meaningful products, syndicates, he said, sold standardized, gutless comics and columns. The trick, bill concluded, was to regain possession of his craft, to produce intelligent and honest cartoons resistant to censurors. He got a drawing table at the times where he said i could