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Posted on 10/24/2003 3:53:18 AM PDT by snippy_about_it
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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| Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should feel free to address their specific circumstances or whatever issues concern them in an atmosphere of peace, understanding, brotherhood and support. The FReeper Foxhole hopes to share with it's readers an open forum where we can learn about and discuss military history, military news and other topics of concern or interest to our readers be they Veteran's, Current Duty or anyone interested in what we have to offer. If the Foxhole makes someone appreciate, even a little, what others have sacrificed for us, then it has accomplished one of it's missions. We hope the Foxhole in some small way helps us to remember and honor those who came before us.
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 Sergeant, United States Army and Cartoonist Many people have described their wartime experiences in letters home. But very few have chronicled war for the people doing the fighting. Bill Mauldin, World War II's most famous cartoonist, is one of them.  "Radio th' ol' man we'll be late on account of a thousand-mile detour." William Henry Mauldin was born October 29, 1921 in Mountain Park, New Mexico. Though he did not graduate from high school, he took a correspondence course in cartooning, and later attended the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. In 1940, just five days before the National Guard was federalized, Bill Mauldin enlisted in the Arizona National Guard. This is truly where his career as the world knows it began. While serving in Oklahoma Mauldin began doing drawings for the Oklahoma City newspaper, and the 45th Division News. Sergeant Bill Mauldin, K Company, 180th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Division was with the division when it shipped out for combat duty in the European Theater of Operations in 1943, when he was 21. Upon his arrival in Sicily, he joined the Stars & Stripes, while still drawing for the 45th Division News.  "So I told Company K they'd just have to work out their replacement problem for themselves." After Ernie Pyle, America's most popular journalist in the Second World War, wrote an article about the work of Mauldin, he was picked up by United Feature Syndicate in 1944 and his cartoons began appearing in newspapers all over the United States. He later recalled that: "I drew pictures for and about the soldiers because I knew what their life was like and understood their gripes. I wanted to make something out of the humorous situations which come up even when you don't think life could be any more miserable."  Mauldin earned a Purple Heart at Cassino. He did not spend all of his time cartooning and working for the 45th Division News during the war. He made sure he spent time with K Company, his fellow infantrymen. In fact, around Christmas 1943, while sketching at the front, a small fragment from a German mortar hit his shoulders, as he noted in The Brass Ring, "My only damage was a ringing in my ears and a fragment in my shoulder. It burned like a fury but was very small. The wound hardly bled." When Mauldin received the Purple Heart for his injury he protested that he had "been cut worse sneaking through barbed-wire fences in New Mexico," the aid told him to take the medal, which might get him discharged earlier at the end of the war.  "Nonsense. S-2 reported that machine gun silenced hours ago. Stop wiggling your fingers at me." Willie and Joe, Mauldin's now famous cartoon characters, were two combat hardened dogfaces. These were muddy and exhausted, but their spirit was never broken. They hated every second of sitting in rain filled foxholes, trudging through hills and valleys loaded down with rifle and pack, and facing enemy fire, but they never gave up.  "Able Fox Five to Able Fox. I got a target but ya gotta be patient." Mauldin's characters were the average GI. He depicted their boredom, rebellion against bad food, lousy living conditions, and clueless officers. Willie and Joe came to be loved by the lower ranks, and by their families back home. In his classic book "Up Front," Mauldin wrote that the expressions on Joe and Willie are "those of infantry soldiers who have been in the war for a couple of years. If he is looking very weary and resigned to the fact that he is probably going to die before it is over, and if he has a deep, almost hopeless desire to go home and forget it all; if he looks with dull, uncomprehending eyes at the fresh-faced kid who is talking about all the joys of battle and killing Germans, then he comes from the same infantry as Joe and Willie."  Mauldin draws Pvt. Robert L. Bowman in May 1944. A notable exception to the American love of Bill Mauldin's Willie and Joe was General George Patton. In 1945 he wrote a letter to the Stars & Stripes threatening to ban the newspaper from Third Army if it did not stop carrying "Mauldin's scurrilous attempts to undermine military discipline."  "Awright, awright — it's a general! Ya wanna pass in review?" General Dwight Eisenhower did not agree and was concerned that any attempt at censorship would undermine morale. In hopes of reconciling the differences he set up a meeting between Mauldin and Patton. Mauldin went to see Patton in March 1945. He had to endure a lengthy lecture on the dangers of producing "anti-officer cartoons". Mauldin's response was the rightful argument that the soldiers had legitimate grievances that needed to be addressed.  Bill Maudlin wrote about his meeting with General George Patton in his book, The Brass Ring (1971) There he sat, big as life even at that distance. His hair was silver, his face was pink, his collar and shoulders glittered with more stars than I could count, his fingers sparkled with rings, and an incredible mass of ribbons started around desktop level and spread upward in a flood over his chest to the very top of his shoulder, as if preparing to march down his back too. His face was rugged, with an odd, strangely shapeless outline; his eyes were pale, almost colorless, with a choleric bulge. His small, compressed mouth was sharply downturned at the comers, with a lower lip which suggested a pouting child as much as a no-nonsense martinet. It was a welcome, rather human touch. Beside him, lying in a big chair, was Willie, the bull terrier. If ever dog was suited to master this one was. Willie had his beloved boss's expression and lacked only the ribbons and stars. I stood in that door staring into the four meanest eyes I'd ever seen. Patton demanded: "What are you trying to do, incite a goddamn mutiny?" Patton then launched into a lengthy dissertation about armies and leaders of the past, of rank and its importance. Patton was a master of his subject felt truly privileged, as if I were hearing Michelangelo on painting. I had been too long enchanted by the army myself to be anything but impressed by this magnificent old performer's monologue. Just as when I had first saluted him, I felt whatever martial spirit was left in me being lifted out and fanned into flame. If you're a leader, you don't push wet spaghetti, you pull it. The U.S. Army still has to learn that. The British understand it. Patton understood it. I always admired Patton. Oh, sure, the stupid bastard was crazy. He was insane. He thought he was living in the Dark Ages. Soldiers were peasants to him. I didn't like that attitude, but I certainly respected his theories and the techniques he used to get his men out of their foxholes. Frederick S. Voss wrote about the meeting between Bill Maudlin and George Patton in his book, Reporting the War (1994) Pulling from a drawer some clipped samples of Mauldin's work, he asked their creator to justify their anti-officer tone. In doing so, Mauldin thought he acquitted himself fairly well. By making soldiers laugh at their grievances and letting them know that someone else understood them, he said in effect, he was helping them to let off steam in a relatively harmless way and thereby preventing the mutiny that Patton was so sure he was causing. Patton was clearly unconvinced. "You can't run an army like a mob," he declared when Mauldin was done, and after a handshake and a smart parting salute from Mauldin, the interview was over. Official recognition for his work came in 1945, when Mauldin was awarded his first Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning. The award read, "For distinguished service as a cartoonist, as exemplified by the cartoon entitled, 'Fresh, spirited American troops, flushed with victory, are bringing in thousands of hungry, ragged, battle-weary prisoners,' in the series entitled, 'Up Front With Mauldin." Bill Mauldin was 23 years old at the time.  Fresh, spirited American troops, flushed with victory, are bringing in thousands of hungry, ragged, battle-weary prisoners. The first collection of cartoons "Up Front" was published in 1945 in book form, and later republished for it's 50th Anniversary in 1995. His first collection of postwar cartoons was entitled "Back Home" and was published in 1947. These cartoons focused on the plight of the GI upon returning to the States, and the political situations that abounded.  "He thinks the food over there was swell. He's glad to be home, but he misses the excitement of battle. You may quote him." Mr. Mauldin became a national phenomenon for awhile. He was on the cover of Time magazine, acted in two movies in 1951 -- "The Red Badge of Courage" and "Up Front". He wrote about the war in Korea for Collier's magazine, and unsuccessfully ran as a Democratic candidate for Congress from the state of New York. As a member of the United Feature Syndicate Mauldin's cartoons attacking racism, the Ku Klux Klan and McCarthyism appeared in newspapers all over the United States. Mauldin's cartoons were unpopular with the newspapers in small towns and he had difficulty getting them published. Disillusioned, Mauldin gave up cartooning.  He returned in 1958 and found a home with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1958. He proceeded to win his second Pulitzer prize the following year. In this prize winning cartoon, Mauldin was commenting on the plight of Soviet author Boris Pasternak. One prisoner in a Siberian camp says to another, "I won the Nobel Prize for literature. What was your crime?"  The year 1962 found Mauldin working for the Chicago Sun-Times. While there, one of his best-known cartoons was created. After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy this cartoon (showing Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial, with his hands covering his face) was published.  During his career Mauldin wrote and illustrated more than twelve books. This included Up Front (1945), Back Home (1947), Mud and Guts (1978), Hurray for B.C. (1979), Bill Mauldin's Army (1983) and Let's Declare Ourselves Winners and Get the Hell Out (1985). On Wednesday, January 22, 2003 Bill Mauldin died of complications from Alzheimer's disease, including pneumonia, at a Newport Beach nursing home, said Andy Mauldin, 54, of Santa Fe, New Mexico, one of the cartoonist's seven sons. "It's really good that he's not suffering anymore," he said. "He had a terrible struggle." He was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery. Section 64, Grave 6974. Accordingly, he is now at rest among his beloved GI's. For many years on Veteran's Day, Charles Schulz, the "Peanuts" creator, had Snoopy dress in his old uniform and go over to Bill Mauldin's house to reminisce and quaff a few root beers. Symbolically, this was a tribute to all veterans, their sacrifice, their loss of innocence. Snoopy would become sentimental and sometimes end up in tears. It was also a tribute to Mauldin and his importance to the G. I.s of World War II. Schulz himself had been a machine gunner in Europe. Mauldin didn't romanticize war. His was a war of rain and mud, hunger and stupidity, arrogance and ignorance, and Willie and Joe did their best to just keep going.       |
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Air Power |
Responding to the US Army Air Corps’ need for a high speed medium bomber, the Martin Company submitted an unusual design; a cantilever shoulder wing monoplane carrying five (later seven) crewmen. While the plane met or exceeded all performance requirements, with a wing optimized for high speed cruising, it was found to be unstable at low speeds during take-offs and landings. After a number of training accidents, modifications were made and the Marauder went on to record the lowest attrition rate of any American aircraft serving with the Air Corps' 9th Air Force in Europe, a remarkable feat considering the plane's undeserved nickname of "Widow-maker," among others (see Nicknames below.)
The B-26 carried a normal bomb load of 3,000 pounds, though another 1,000 pounds could be added when fitted with special wing hardpoints. Armament included eleven 12.7-mm machine guns in fixed, forward-firing, nose and waist mounts, and in powered dorsal- and tail-turrets. Though its service ceiling was 19,800 feet, the Marauder’s primary role was close tactical ground support. As such, it was widely used in the Pacific theater and the Mediterranean by both the USAAC and the RAF, which had acquired 522 B-26’s under Lend-Lease.
Some of the twenty variants of this aircraft included the B-26A (increased added fuel capacity, externally mounted torpedo, system revisions and heavier armament, of which 139 were built); the B-26B (bigger engines, armament revisions and better armor protection, a 6-foot increase in wing span, taller vertical tail and more armament, of which 1,883 were built); the B26-F (improved take-off performance and equipment changes, of which 300 were built); and the JM-1 (one of several designations for US Navy models of the Marauder, used mainly for training of shipboard anti-air crews and photo-reconnaissance.)
Specifications:
Manufacturer: Martin Aviation
Type: Medium Day Bomber
Engines: Two 2,000-hp Pratt & Whitney R-2800-43 Double Wasp radial piston engines.
Crew: Seven
Number Built: 5,157
Number Still Airworthy: One, with at least one more undergoing restoration to flying condition.
Dimensions:
Weight: Empty 25,300 lbs., Max Takeoff 38,200 lbs.
Wing Span: 71ft. 0in.
Length: 56ft. 1in.
Height: 20ft. 4in.
Performance :
Cruising speed: 190 mph.
Maximum Speed: 283mph
Ceiling: 19,800 ft.
Range: 1,100 miles
Armaments:
11 12.7-mm (0.5-inch) machine guns
Up to 4,000 pounds of bombs
ROFLOL! And wiping away tears of laughter. Oh mercy! This makes my day!
By making soldiers laugh at their grievances and letting them know that someone else understood them, he said in effect, he was helping them to let off steam in a relatively harmless way and thereby preventing the mutiny that Patton was so sure he was causing.
Genius. This is the kind of humor that keeps us from taking ourselves too serious. Bill Mauldin would have made a great FReeper!
With the help of friends on the Internet we’ve compiled the following possible uses for the UN flag:
Air-sickness bags (put the UN logo inside the bag - no point in making people sick just by seeing the bag)
Artillery reference point - to fire at for effect
Bath towel - to wipe certain body parts
Bird cage liner
Burn at patriotic rallies
Candle/lamp wicks
Cat bed liner - to keep the fleas off your good blankie
Cat box liner
Cat litter
Cat scratching post - to wrap around the post and let your cat get its claws into - good kitty!!!
Chainsaw wipe down rag
Chimney sweep rag
Chimney sweep tarp - to protect your carpet from soot
Compost
Corpse blanket—to wrap up the dead politicians, BATF, FBI, FEMA, etc., or anyone else who tries to collect our guns.
Dart board backdrop
Diapers - turned out, not in
Dipstick rag carried under the hood of your vehicle
Dog urine wheel protectors
Doggy chastity belt
Doggy chew toy
Dog poop cleaner upper
Doormats - to wipe muddy feet on, at home or place of business
Dryer vent filter/lint catcher
Drop cloth - to use while you are painting and other dirty jobs
Dust rag
Emergency heating fuel - burn in fireplace
Feminine napkins
Fill material in nuclear waste shipping containers
Filler material in roofing shingles
Fire starter - soak in kerosene
Food - to cram down the throats of crooked politicians, lawyers, and judges
Food wrapper - to wrap spoiled food in; especially good for rotten fish parts
Garage - if your car has oil leaks, you should have one under it to keep garage clean
Garbage can liner
Goat feed - to feed your goats - except your favorite one, of course
Gun cleaning rags, sold at gun shows
Gutter rag
Handkerchief - use to blow your nose on
Hang one out the bottom of your driver’s door, into the street, dragging through the mud as an excellent way to initiate a UN conversation
Ink blotter
Insoles
Kitchen towel - to clean up all the grease and grime & keep your other towels clean
Molotov cocktails
Mops
Mud flaps
Nuclear waste filler - put in nuclear waste containers
On the floor under junior’s height chair for food droppings
Outhouse wallpaper - tack up on the outhouse walls (could be used for TP later)
Outhouse wipes (use with caution, may cause rash)
Overalls - put them on the butt of your bib overalls
Paint brush cleaning rag - to clean up all your old paint brushes with
Paint filter - use to strain your old paint with
Panty hose laundry bag - tie up your panty hose in them when you wash them
Print them on rolls of toilet paper
Puppy house-training - Scotchgard coated for repeated use
Put it in a jar of urine and call it art
Road patch - place flag in pothole, pour tar generously, pack down
Suppositories - for Bill and Hillary to use
Send to drug king pins (or CIA) for wrapping illegal drugs
Shoe polish rag
Shop rags
Table cloth - for when your one-year old grandchild is coming over
Targets - add numbers to the lines of latitude and you’ve got an excellent range target
Temporary gas cap
Test acids on
Toilet seat liner - drape over the toilet seat for sanitation reasons; flush after use
Trench liner - to line slit trenches with
Under grandpa’s spittoon
Vomit bucket, when you have stomach flu
Wrap spoiled food in, for disposal
Not familiar with that one.
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