Military Bookshelf: Iconic & Ironic

Military.com - Tom Miller

Mar 03, 2008

Bill Mauldin: A Life Up Front, by Todd DePastino.  Norton, $27.95 (320p), ISBN 978-0-393-06183-3

Bill Mauldin's early life perhaps explains his later "reflexive sympathy for the underdog."  Born into a dysfunctional family, he grew up poor in depression-era New Mexico.  His mother left while he was young and his father was a rogue.  Making matters worse, young Bill suffered a bout of rickets that left him with "an odd, almost comical physique." 

But Mauldin also possessed a quick, creative mind, a talent for drawing, and a burning desire to become someone. 

With borrowed money, Mauldin took a correspondence course in cartooning and then enrolled at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts.  Settling in Phoenix, he did free-lance work painting signs and drawing political posters. 

With work sparse, Mauldin enlisted in the Arizona National Guard's recently-mobilized 45th Infantry Division in 1940.  After stints as a quartermaster and an infantryman, he landed a spot as a cartoonist for the 45th Division News. 

Mauldin deployed to North Africa in 1943 as a full-time staffer for the News and followed the 45th Division to Sicily and later Italy.  His big break came when he joined the GI newspaper Stars and Stripes in 1944.  It was there that his signature characters, the weary and ironic frontline infantrymen Willie and Joe, were born. 

When columnist Ernie Pyle hailed Mauldin as "the finest cartoonist the war has produced," he was already well on his way to becoming "the most famous enlisted man in the United States Army." 

But, not everyone was impressed.  Some of the brass disapproved of Mauldin's disheveled infantrymen and subversive humor--none more than General George Patton who famously threatened to throw the cartoonist in jail. 

After the war, Mauldin tried his hand at a number of things, including a stint as an actor, before settling into a career as an editorial cartoonist—for which he won a second Pulitzer Prize.  (He won the first in 1945 for his wartime work.)

Mauldin's personal life was not as charmed as his professional life.  Married and divorced three times, he became paranoid and even abusive as he grew older and suffered from Alzheimer's late in life.  Mauldin died at 81 on January 22, 2003.

A historian at Pennsylvania's Waynesbury College, DePastino (Citizen Hobo: How a Century of Homelessness Shaped America) has mined the Mauldin archives and related sources to produce a passionate and compassionate biography of one of World War II's iconic figures.  Those interested in military history, cartooning, and the tumultuous post-war era will find much to like here--including a delightful collection selected from Mauldin's 600-odd wartime cartoons.  
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Betrayal, by John Lescroart.  Dutton, $26.95 (400p) ISBN 978-0-525-95039-4

Popular and prolific suspense novelist Lescroart aims for topical in this implausible and predictable mystery.

California National Guard officer Evan Scholler is deployed to Iraq along with his Transportation Company.  When their vehicles don't arrive in Kuwait, Scholler and a squad are put to work protecting the employees of military contractor Allstrong Security. 

Scholler suffers a critical head wound when Allstrong employee Ron Nolan triggers an attack on their convoy by killing an Iraqi family.  While Scholler recovers at Walter Reed, Nolan returns to California where he steals Scholler's ex-girlfriend Tara Wheatley. 

When Iraqi immigrants Ibrahim Khalil and his wife are murdered, Nolan tries to frame Scholler--who's returned to work as a California cop--for the crime.  An irate Scholler threatens to kill Nolan. 

Voila.  Nolan turns up dead--brutally beaten and shot--and Scholler is fingered as the perp.  Although he claims that he can't remember anything about the incident, Scholler is convicted and sent to prison for life. 

Three years later, the lawyer working on Scholler's appeal for a new trial disappears and the case is handed off to San Francisco attorney Dismas Hardy.   Hardy and his buddy Abe Glitsky, back in his old job as head of homicide at the SFPD, are soon convinced that not only is Scholler innocent but also a conspiracy of rogue military contractors and high-level politicians are protecting those really responsible. 

This is not Lescroart's finest hour.  Much of the action is implausible; the characters are caricatures; and the dialogue is alternately insipid or overwrought.  "'I can't do forty,'" Scholler whines when his attorney suggests a plea bargain.  Tara feels "a connection [with Evan] that went down to the bottom of her soul."  And, then, there's the "moral rot that festered in Iraq and in the halls of power."  Who knew?
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Copyright 2008 by Tom Miller