Laugh at the Army?

Bill Mauldin's Army dates from 1939, from the lean waiting days of leggings, dishpan helmets, the first jeeps, and upended logs dignified by the sign "howitzer" tacked to their wooden trails. Mauldin's book takes that army through its adolescence in training and its maturity under fire. His cartoons tell a lot about what made that army grow, and even more about how Mauldin grew with it.

As an 18-year-old contributor to the 45th Division News, Mauldin's drawings (of which this book reprints 439) retained most of the stock situations of the civilian cartoonist's view of the army. There were the gags about KP, guard duty, and the soldier whose wife turns up in the WAC's. But as you thumb through this handsome book, as Mauldin's outfit moves from training stateside to Sicily, then Italy, the top sergeant gags disappear. Instead there are the drawings that eventually took Mauldin away from his division and gave his a job doing them full time--the wry drawings of tired, unshaven men, fighting a tough and unglamorous war, of muddy soldiers sleeping on their feet, kidnapping replacements, fighting from mountain to mountain in an unfunny struggle to keep warm, dry, and alive.

Mauldin was an editorial cartoonist and a good one, more remarkable since most of his drawings were done for squeamish service papers. He laughs at airmen and officers, sneers at the "garritroopers"--"too far forward t'wear ties an' to far back t'git shot." The only people who keep out from under Mauldin's wrath are the infantrymen--Willie and Joe. Mauldin's heart lies squarely with the dogface. One thing Sloane's book lacks is the biting accompanying text of the earlier Mauldin.

In a recent bit of advice to young cartoonists, a writer's magazine advised them to stay away from "serious stuff ... leave that to Bill Mauldin." It is probably sound advice. People like their cartoons, even army cartoons, to be funny, and the latrine or the mess sergeant is still good for a boff. Mauldin deals with men who are living with death, and death is not funny at all. It is uncomfortable to watch, and even from Mauldin's tough, cynical view-point, it is not good for those who want to be titillated. This is no joke book. It is a serious book, and a fine one.