<p>Someone from the 3rd Infantry Division got in touch and said he thought I'd want to know. He said it was about Bill Mauldin. What followed was not so good.</p>
<p>I'll get to that in a moment. For those of you too young to recognize the name: Bill Mauldin, who is now 80 years old, was the finest and most beloved editorial cartoonist of World War II. An enlisted man who drew for Stars and Stripes, he was the one who gave the soldiers hope and sardonic smiles on the battlefields; Mauldin knew their hearts because he was one of them. Using his dirty, unshaven, bone-weary infantrymen characters Willie and Joe as his vehicle, Mauldin let all those troops know there was someone who understood. A Mauldin classic from World War II: an exhausted infantryman standing in front of a table where medals were being given out, saying: "Just gimme th' aspirin. I already got a Purple Heart."</p>