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Bill Mauldin Collection (so far)


gitana
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My dad gave me a copy of Up Front and since then I've been a big fan of Mauldin's wartime work - it's one of my favorite books about the war. In his later memoirs, The Brass Ring, he mentions most of his books and booklets that were published, so I've tried to get all of them. However, I'm certainly not an expert and haven't gone back to verify the order.

 

1941 Star Spangled Banter The first of several with the same title, done at the time of the Louisiana Maneuvers. Very hard to find.

 

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1943 Sicily Sketch Book Published in Palermo Italy. Also hard to find.

 

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1944 Mud, Mules, and Mountains This particular one has a blue cover, but I have seen other colors used. Perhaps they did runs of the book and when they ran out of one color, switched to another. These can be found without too much trouble online.

 

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1944 Star Spangled Banter The same title but with new cartoons. Issued by Army Times (Stars and Stripes). 48p. 8-1/2”x10-3/4”. These are relatively easy to find as well.

 

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1944 Star Spangled Banter It can get confusing with a third booklet with the same title, and I assume that this was published specifically for the soldiers, hence the smaller size. These are the same, but one has the USO label on it. This shares some of the same cartoons with the one above, but most seem different - or at least rearranged. 4 1/2 by 7 in. 32 pages

 

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1944 News of the 45th Mauldin did the drawings for this book, as he was a member of the division.

 

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1945 Combat Tips for Fifth Army Infantry Replacements Again, not Mauldin's book but one he illustrated. Very difficult to find. I got lucky with this one and didn't pay much.

 

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1945 This Damn Tree Leaks I have two versions, one of which is about 1/2 inch larger than the other - a very small difference. One of them is signed by Mauldin. There may be more variations out there. Not hard to find.

 

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So that's it. Of course I have Up Front, Back Home, and The Brass Ring. I haven't bothered with the other ones as they don't deal with WWII as much. Back Home is not a keeper - it's very political and bitter to some degree. I didn't get much out of it, but that's just my opinion.

 

 

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That was a great post, Gitana! Informative, well-illustrated, short and to the point. Hope all Forum members

read this excellent post. "Up Front" should be required reading in every high school classroom.

Tom

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I have read the Brass Ring and love his work, too. Thanks for sharing your great collection. There's a tshirt there somewhere...

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Great idea! I enjoy reading Mauldins books as well as his cartoons. One book to look to add to your collection is MUD & GUTS, published in the 1970s for the bicentennial. It was Mauldins look at the soldiers of the American Revolution. You can find it on Amazon for a few dollars.

 

 

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Mauldin's cartoons are timeless! I had a few framed copies put up in the hallway, the commanders office and in mine. A lot of the young Soldiers liked them. When we rotated out I gave them to the new 1SG. Thanks for posting.

 

Joe

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Thanks all, it's been fun to hunt for some of these. If you're interested, the Library of Congress has some of his work online that you can download as high-resolution images - perfect for large format printing (if you have the means to do so). Here's the link (you'll have to sift to find the WWII ones)

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Thanks! Willy & Joe epitomized the American Infantry soldiers. Mauldin was a genius. Bobgee

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riflegreen297

Does anyone have a copy of the Mauldin cartoon, "Yer wild, happy, free life is over. Tomorrer ya start luggin' ammo agin" ? It is the cartoon that shows an officer standing on the ground and looking upward talking to a sniper in a tree, breaking the good news to him. I have looked on the net and cannot find that cartoon. If someone has a hard copy and could scan and send it to me I would greatly appreciate it.

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willysmb44

Great list. You have two of the hardest to find. Star Spangled Banter is an uber-rare book, I've only ever seen three for sale in all the years I've been collecting Mauldin stuff.

Here I am on History Channel a few years ago talking about the subject (and thumbing through my own copy of Star Spangled Banter):

 

Thank you. If there are more out there that I haven't discovered yet, please add to the list.

 

Drop me an e-mail, I can sent you (or anyone else who wants it) a PDF link to the article I did on Mauldin's work for Army Motors back in 2003 right after he passed. I have a quite substantial collection of his work including 1st editions of all his books (and even some of his own personal copies of some books), and stacks of magazines that have his work. I also have a couple of original sketches of his.

If you don't have it already, I strongly suggest Todd Depastino's excellent book, Bill Mauldin: A Life Up Front (W.W. Norton, 2008) as well as the box set his edited on Maudlin's WW2 work, Willie & Joe: The WWII Years (Fantagraphics Books). Each can easily be found on Amazon as well as any decent book store that can order for you...

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That's a great clip, Lee. I love these original booklets and it's a lot of fun to find the rare ones. I can only think of one more to get that I know of. I do have the box set, The WWII Years, but didn't include it as it wasn't something he had a hand in producing. And I haven't read Depastino's book yet, but would like to. PM on the way re. your article.

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My Grandfather was in Italy during World War Two. I have possession of all the letters he wrote home, and in one of them he went off on a rant about the "front line reporters" who have never actually been to the front and give a terrible idea of what's going on. He said that the most accurate coverage he had seen was the Mauldin cartoons, and speculated that after the war they would be collected into a volume and published, and that that would constitute THE telling of GI's view of the war.

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willysmb44

My Grandfather was in Italy during World War Two. I have possession of all the letters he wrote home, and in one of them he went off on a rant about the "front line reporters" who have never actually been to the front and give a terrible idea of what's going on. He said that the most accurate coverage he had seen was the Mauldin cartoons, and speculated that after the war they would be collected into a volume and published, and that that would constitute THE telling of GI's view of the war.

 

 

I think the reason people remember Mauldin well over his contemporaries (and there plenty of other well-known cartoonists in WW2 doing good work) is that the GIs remember that Mauldin was one of the few to spend any time on the lines. Some never left England!

That said, Maudlin would have been the first to admit he didn't spend much time up front, though. But he was there more than almost any other cartoonist.

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I've got a GI issue pocket book version of "Up Front"...but no pics of it to post here (sorry!)

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  • 1 month later...

I too am a huge fan of Bill Mauldin's, and believe that he was one of the most important cartoonists of the 20th century. Lew Sayre Schwartz, a cartoonist who knew Mauldin after WWII, once regaled me with a story about Mauldin giving him a ride in his Willie Jeep in NYC, coming from a cartoonists' function. It sounded like it was quite the adventure.

 

I've been collecting the Mauldin books and his original art for quite some time, and while I don't have some of those rarer volumes, I'm glad to have found what I did. I've gotten pretty lucky with the original art, and have three of Mauldin's WWII originals, as well as a couple of others. If interested, they can be viewed here: http://www.comicartfans.com/galleryroom.asp?gsub=113401.

 

A few years ago, I wrote an article about Gregor Duncan, the cartoonist/illustrator killed at Anzio in 1944. He was also a Stars and Stripes cartoonist, and Mauldin was the one who showed him the ropes once Duncan entered the Mediterranean Theater. I was able to interview Duncan's widow about a year before she passed. She was also stationed overseas, with the American Red Cross, and met Mauldin at the same time. She stayed in sporadic contact with him after the war. In this gallery http://www.comicartfans.com/galleryroom.asp?gsub=71410, you can see the Duncans with Mauldin in the last image.

 

Many thanks for all of the great info in these posts.

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  • 9 months later...

I recently ran across what I believe to be a very scarce Mauldin item, related to the first edition of Star Spangled Banter. The book was published in 1941 by the Universal Press. According to Todd DePastino's book, Mauldin was approached by two men from Universal, who had driven to Louisiana from San Antonio, during the maneuvers. This Comix Army Stationary was also published by Universal, so I imagine that it too came out in 1941. The boxed set features five different Mauldin cartoon designs. There are 12 sheets in this box, but I believe that it originally held 15 sheets; three of each design.

 

I've never seen this before, and when I queried Todd, he had never heard of it. I can't imagine that many survived, especially with the cheap cardboard box. I'll attach two images in two different posts, since the files are too large for one post.

 

Best,

Rob

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Patchcollector

Glad to see this thread updated,I missed it the first time around!When I was a kid I was given a first printing of "Up Front".I really liked that book and I still have it today.That book was probably one of the first military related items I ever collected.Nice memories.

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