Sur le Front

A gifted child from a poor family, Bill Mauldin (1921–2003) enlisted in 1940 and became the cartoonist for the major army newspaper Stars and Stripes. Sent to the European front, he was the first to describe the real living conditions of GIs. As a spokesperson for the troops, their misery and their anger, Mauldin revealed to America the other side of the story, the hidden face of the US Army: the big scandals and petty schemes that drove soldiers on the front line mad with rage. This knack for putting his foot in it earned him untold trouble with certain senior officers, foremost among them George Patton himself.