Post Office to honor Bill Mauldin, "grunts' hero" with stamp

Bill Mauldin stamp honors grunts' hero
By Bob Greene, CNN Contributor
March 7, 2010 9:53 a.m. EST

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Bob Greene lauds the Postal Service for issuing stamp in honor of cartoonist Bill Mauldin
Greene: Mauldin's funny, honest WWII soldiers, Willie and Joe, comforted millions
He writes Patton wanted Mauldin to stop drawing his pointed cartoons, but Ike overruled him
When Mauldin was dying, old soldiers came in droves to visit and honor him, Greene says
Editor's note: Bob Greene, a CNN contributor, is a best-selling author whose new book is "Late Edition: A Love Story."

(CNN) -- The post office gets a lot of criticism. Always has, always will.

And with the renewed push to get rid of Saturday mail delivery, expect complaints to intensify.

But the United States Postal Service deserves a standing ovation for something that's going to happen this month: Bill Mauldin is getting his own postage stamp.

Mauldin died at age 81 in the early days of 2003. The end of his life had been rugged. He had been scalded in a bathtub, which led to terrible injuries and infections; Alzheimer's disease was inflicting its cruelties. Unable to care for himself after the scalding, he became a resident of a California nursing home, his health and spirits in rapid decline.

He was not forgotten, though. Mauldin, and his work, meant so much to the millions of Americans who fought in World War II, and to those who had waited for them to come home. He was a kid cartoonist for Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper; Mauldin's drawings of his muddy, exhausted, whisker-stubbled infantrymen Willie and Joe were the voice of truth about what it was like on the front lines.

Mauldin was an enlisted man just like the soldiers he drew for; his gripes were their gripes, his laughs were their laughs, his heartaches were their heartaches. He was one of them. They loved him.
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Bill Mauldin stamp honors grunts hero