Near Cassino, in Italy, Sgt. Mauldin was wounded, while working on a cartoon, by a fragment from an enemy mortar shell. He walked to an aid station, and a medic removed the shrapnel and handed him a Purple Heart.
He turned the incident into a memorable cartoon: Joe slouches infront of a medic, sitting at a table piled with Purple Hearts. "Just gimme th' aspirin. I already got a Purple Heart," he says.
Such irreverence could not go unpunished. Early in 1945, Gen. George S. Patton demanded that Stars and Stripes drop Mr. Mauldin.
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, aware of the morale value of Willie and Joe, intervened, arranging a meeting between the cartoonist and the famously gruff Patton.
"I was scared to death," Mr. Mauldin recalled, at Ike's death in 1969. "For 45 minutes, Patton lectured me on military history and his theories of discipline. It was a very eloquent chewing-out."
You can see the cartoon at:
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ARTmauldin.htm