Willie and Joe!  Sure there was a plethora of cartoon characters around during World War Two, but Bill Mauldin’s legendary duo are the only ones drawn by a GI, not a civilian. 

I would like to say right off that this book is a timeless classic without any flaws whatsoever.  Mauldin speaks free and easy about pet peeves of his without fear in point-blank passages such as this gem about officers: “Even after four long years in the army I still disagree with some of the officer-enlisted man traditions.  But I’m not rabid about it.  If the men who wrote the rules prefer their own exclusive bathrooms and latrines, that’s okay with me.  But if the officer is going to have a tent over his latrine in the field, how about one for me?  I might not be as important as he is, but I can get just as wet.  And keep him out of my latrine when the weather is bad, and his latrine is farther away than mine.  If he wishes to eat at his own table, and wants me to wash his dishes because he was weighty problems on his mind and no time for dishwashing, then I understand.  But let him keep his hand off my own kitchen’s canned orange juice.”

However, as Mauldin notes at the start of his book: “My business is drawing, not writing, and this text is pretty much background for the drawings.”

Within these drawings, we get a glimpse of the enlisted men of World War Two mostly embodied in the form of big-nose Willie and short-nosed Joe, two scruffy, bearded, dryly sarcastic GI’s who are willing to do their duty as much as the next guy but are not gung-ho about it,  saying things to each other in the midst of a firefight like “I made it.  I owe ya another fifty bucks.” When not under fire they are more than willing to wrap themselves around a bottle of booze or make a string of paper people or bark at a clean-shaven, glasses wearing replacement “Take off yer hat when ya mention sex here.  It’s a reverint subject.”

Mauldin also did other soldier subjects beyond Willie and Joe such as a gem of a cartoon where an officer addressing a group of wide-eyed Quartermaster truck drivers says to his men “Some of you may not come back.  A French convoy has been reported on the road.”  (This references another gripe of Mauldin’s: how the French Quartermaster truck drivers were worse than the American ones.)  Or one where a captain and a lieutenant wearing overcoats over their pajamas and slippers on a rainy night in a muddy camp are by two signs: one which points in one direction saying “E.M. 10 yd.  Officers 500 yd.”  “Whistle if you see anybody coming,” the cap tells the louie.  (This cartoon references the text quoted above.)

I could go on and on raving about Up Front, but don’t take my word for it.  Get it and enjoy a look at the dry, sardonic wit of the American soldier done as only Bill Mauldin could.