“Look at an infantryman’s eyes and you can tell how much war he has seen.”

Bill Mauldin, like many of his generation, had the opportunity to experience and achieve much at a young age. He won the Pulitzer Prize at 23 for his work as an editorial cartoonist during World War II. The greatest cartoonist of the war, Mauldin’s images documented the everyday experience from the perspective of the common infantryman in Europe.

Often skewered by his cartoons, General Patton disliked Mauldin and would have censored his work if Eisenhower hadn’t prevented it. Patton felt that Mauldin was disrespectful, that his images bred discontent—he was and they did, and the soldiers loved him for it.

At the end of the war, Mauldin wanted to have his archetypical GIs, Willie and Joe, die in combat like so many average Joes had, but Stars and Stripes, the US military newspaper, prevented it.

Samples of Maudlin’s work from Stars and Stripes.