He drew a weekly cartoon for Stars & Stripes, they were gritty and realistic, and Willie and Joe are the classic archetypes of the weary dogface . . . but Mauldin's work was editorial, not reportorial (and occasionally got him in trouble, especially with Patton).
"Radio th' old man we'll be late on account of a thousand-mile detour."
All that said, he was a brilliant cartoonist, won the Pulitzer after the war for one of his editorial cartoons.