Today we're going to take a peak at that rara avis - the cartoonist at war, and more specifically, those who were active in World War One and World War Two. There aren't too many of these to consider, it is true. They seem to occupy a much lower position in the pecking order from the official 'war artists', such as Augustus John and John Singer Sargent (WW1) and L.S. Lowry (WW2).
There were, however, many other cartoonists who ventured nowhere near the battlefield, yet did excellent work commenting on the 'home front' as well as major military actions; I am thinking here of David Low's iconic image of a defiant 'Tommy' (following the fall of France in 1940) standing on a headland and shaking his fist at the hordes of Luftwaffe bombers overhead, whilst declaiming, 'Very well, alone!'; it is an image of such power that it has been parodied well into the modern era.
There were many similarities between infantry combat in WW1 and WW2 - trenches (in some areas), weapons (Springfield 1903 rifle, British Lee-Enfield rifle, Browning Automatic Rifle, Vickers .303 machine gun, Colt Model 1911 automatic, etc), casualties, chaos, and above all, the all-pervasive rain and attendant mud. The 'doughboy' and 'Tommy' of WW1 would recognize and commiserate with the trials and tribulations of the 'GI' and 'Tommy' of WW2.
Bruce Bairnsfather was born in Murree, India (now, Pakistan) in 1887. He was sent back to England in 1895, and just like Rudyard Kipling had done 17 years before, entered the United Services College, Devon, the noted school which prepared the sons of military officers and civil servants for entry into the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich (which trained Artillery or Engineer Officers) or the Royal Indian Engineering College, Cooper's Hill, Surrey, which trained civil engineers for India - all of these establishments are mentioned in 'Stalky & Co' by Rudyard Kipling.
Unfortunately, Bairnsfather failed to get into a military academy, but did manage to join the Cheshire Regiment of the British Army. He resigned in 1907, and joined the John Hassall School of Art, as he had decided that he really wanted to become an artist. Eventually, he achieved success as a commercial artist designing advertisements for such firms as Lipton's Tea.
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, on the June 28, 1914, in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina was the root cause of what became the Great War (later World War one). The system of interlocking alliances and military agreements between members of the Central Powers (Germany, Austria–Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria) and the Triple Entente (France, Russia and the British Empire - Italy and others joined later) quickly caused general mobilization across much of Europe and beyond. The continent slid, inevitably, into a long sought-for war between bitter European political rivals, a conflict which had been brewing for years (see the amazing 'The Guns of August', the Pulitzer Prize-Winning work by Barbara W. Tuchman).
Bairnsfather rejoined 'the Colours', this time as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. He left in November, 1914 on a troopship from Portsmouth to Le Havre, and joined up with his battalion at the front at the Bois de Ploegstert in Belgium, or as Bairnsfather said, 'known all over the world as Plugstreet Wood'. He was put in command of his battalion's Machine Gun Section, a group of Maxim .303" machine guns, and that was to be his special niche from then on (the British Expeditionary Force had been sent to the Continent equipped with mainly Maxim guns, as the newer Vickers was in very short supply)
Trench warfare was utterly appalling, and in 'Bullets and Billets' (1916), the author describes men, in certain areas, standing in their waists in water for up to four hours at a time (later, trenches would be better constructed with elaborate dug-outs, duckboards and other 'amenities', but the first examples were almost beyond imagination). His job was to sight and emplace the Maxim guns so as to give enfilading fire in the event of a German attack, or to cover his battalion if they were ordered 'over the top'. He thought of having a visiting card printed, 'Bruce Bairnsfather - Machine guns removed at shortest notice - Attacks quoted for'. Bairnsfather's description of the early phase of WW1 is laced with humor, but gives a graphic description of the horrors of life in the trenches.
One thing that stands out is that he actually took part in that incredible episode known afterwards as 'the Christmas Truce'. On Christmas Day, 1914, in many sections of the Line, particularly those where the German and British trenches were close together, a tacit truce developed, which lead to actual mass fraternization in No Man's Land, between the trenches. Bairnsfather tells of wandering around and watching enemies exchange uniform buttons, or swap small gifts; reports exist that at least one 'pick-up' game of soccer took place. Here is Bairnsfather from 'Bullets and Billets', on the Christmas Truce,
These devils, I could see, all wanted to be friendly; but none of them possessed the open, frank geniality of our men. However, everyone was talking and laughing, and souvenir hunting. Suddenly, one of the Boches ran back to the trench and presently reappeared with a large camera. I posed in a mixed group for several photographs, and I have ever since wished I had fixed up some arrangement for getting a copy.
He did manage to pick up a discarded German rifle, as a souvenir - probably a Gewehr 98 - that he had spied earlier from the British trenches.
Sadly, the 'War to End All Wars' resumed shortly afterwards; it is said that High Command was profoundly displeased at the fraternization, which it was determined to stamp out. After all, there was a war to be fought, wasn't there?
Bairnsfather had been sketching - on scraps of paper, the walls of ruined cottages - as often as he could, and thought of trying to get these 'fragments from France' published, somehow. He submitted his first, showing a huge German shell exploding near a British trench, and entitled 'Where did that one go?', to 'The Bystander' a weekly magazine - and they bought it! From then on Bairnsfather sketched and wrote about the War with great success. His character 'Old Bill', with his walrus like mustache (King's Regulations, 1908, forbade the shaving of the upper lip - this wasn't rescinded until 1916) became a 'star', as did his companions, 'Bert' and 'Alf'. Perhaps his best known cartoon shows two 'Tommies', in a shell-hole at night, under a heavy barrage; one turns to the other and says, 'Well, if you know of a better hole. Go to it', and is featured on the front cover of 'Bullets & Billets' (shown above). After Bairnsfather was wounded at the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915, and sent back to an instructing position in the U.K., he continued to draw and to write of the Great War. He died of bladder cancer in 1959.
Bill Mauldin was very different character. I do NOT think that he would have approved of a Lieutenant that had his own soldier/servant (as Bairnsfather, and all other British Officers of the period did). Born into a New Mexico family with military roots, Mauldin enlisted with New Mexico National Guard in 1940. He had studied at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, so it was natural for him to volunteer to illustrate the newsletter of the 45th Infantry Division, sometimes known as the 'Thunderbird' Division, because of its shoulder sleeve patch, based on a First Nations design. The 45th became one of the very first National Guard units taken under Federal control, on 16th September, 1941, and entered a period of intense training. At this time, Bill Mauldin created two characters, both privates, named 'Willie' (based on one of his friends in the Division) and 'Joe'. These began to figure more and more in his cartoons, taking the place of the typical GI. Like Bairnsfather, the way Mauldin portrayed rain and mud was amazing; they even drew oversized, mud-caked boots the same way!
Bill Mauldin continued to write for the '45th Division News' as the unit was sent overseas, to take part in the partially botched landings on Sicily. They had sailed for the island from the USA, via Oran in Algeria, advanced across Sicily to take the airfield at Comiso, then the city of Ragusa where they joined up with Canadian forces. By the time the unit had taken part in the heavily contested landings at Salerno, Bill Mauldin was also writing for 'the soldiers' newspaper', the 'Stars & Stripes'. The cartoons he produced as his division, and others, slogged up the mainland of Italy were amazingly in tune with the soldier at the front. He was NO friend of officers in general, and general officers in particular. This was typified in a cartoon showing an Army mule skinner, bringing a mule up a mountain, astride of which is a fresh-faced wet-behind-the-ears Second Lieutenant. Willie addresses the mule wrangler, 'Dammit! Ya promised to bring rations this trip!' Another showed two high ranking officers contemplating a wonderful mountain sunset, one turns to the other and says, 'A beautiful view. Is there one for enlisted men?'
These and many other cartoons gave rise to a serious situation. General George Patton wanted Mauldin thrown into jail, or, at the very least, wanted to edit the 'Stars and Stripes' as seen by his 3rd Army. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, refused, as 'this is the soldiers' own newspaper'. What next transpired was quite without precedent. Patton summoned Mauldin - a mere Technical Sergeant - to his headquarters (then in Paris) for a one-on-one meeting, during which he harangued him for 45 minutes. It made no difference, Bill Mauldin STILL continued to expose bad leadership wherever he found it, so much so that in 1945, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning. Mauldin was wounded in the shoulder by a German mortar when visiting a machine gun post in the Italian mountains - he was awarded the Purple Heart. He had intended to 'kill off' his two characters on the last day of the war, but the Editor of 'Stars and Stripes' had refused to even contemplate that ending - he was told that the newspaper would not print such a cartoon!
Post-war, Mauldin wrote a number of books, including 'The Brass Ring', to continue the success of 'Up Front' (Henry Holt & Co., 1945). His work was to prove not quite as successful in civilian life, but he still was active until around 1998. Following his death from Alzheimer's Disease in 2003, the tributes poured in; the United States Postal Service issued a stamp in 2010 featuring a drawing of Willie and Joe and a image of Mauldin.
Strangely, there was a link between the two great cartoonists and writers. Bruce Bairnsfather, unfortunately, was not asked to contribute towards the British war effort during WW2. Instead, his artwork was eagerly embraced by the American Forces in the U.K., where he drew nose art for USAAF aircraft, and contributed cartoons to the 'Stars & Stripes'! Yes, he and Mauldin wrote for the same soldiers' newspaper, in the end.
The war cartoonist - a difficult and dangerous profession. We are fortunate to have the work of Bairnsfather and Mauldin to shine a light on the horrors of war.
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