I enjoy reading the narratives of Ernie Pyle and the cartoons of Bill Mauldin - so did my Dad who served in the PTO and my uncle who served in the ETO - both felt they told the true GIs story.
On April 18, 1945, Pyle died on Ie Shima, an island off Okinawa Honto, after being hit by Japanese machine-gun fire.
The captions for the cartoons read:
- "Able Fox Five to Able Fox. I got a target but ya gotta be patient."
- No caption necessary for the old Cav NCO putting his 'mount' out of its misery - one of Mauldin's most famous and popular cartoons.
- "Radio th' ol' man we'll be late on account of a thousand-mile detour." This 'dig' at Patton caused quite a stir - Patton and Mauldin didn't like each other and Patton sought to censor Mauldin at one point - but the GIs loved Mauldin whose humor reflected theirs, and Patton couldn't do anything about his cartoons being published in Yank magazine.
Richard