“Drawn to Combat: Bill Mauldin and the Art of War”

A combat cartoonist, Bill Mauldin was Ernie Pyle’s contemporary in covering World War II from the perspective of the soldiers doing the fighting. A quote from Pyle about Mauldin in the traveling exhibit “Drawn to Combat: Bill Mauldin and the Art of War,” on view through April 18, 2027, at the National WWII Museum, sums it up: “Mauldin’s cartoons aren’t about training camp life. They are about the men in the line – the tiny percentage of our vast army who are actually doing the dying.” 

The exhibit spans Mauldin’s full life, from a Depression-era childhood in New Mexico to big-city newspaper political cartoonist. Life-size renditions of his Willie and Joe cartoon characters from the war – who captured the frustrations of front-line fighters and transmitted through syndication an unvarnished look at the war back to the home front – greet visitors at the entrance of the exhibit, which originated at the Pritzker Military Museum & Library in Kenosha, Wis.

The exhibit’s opening wall demonstrates the challenge the exhibit presented to the National WWII Museum team, who had to expand the display from mostly two-dimensional cartoons and a few objects (including Mauldin’s Purple Heart) to fill the expansive Alario Special Exhibition Hall.

Print and podcast coverage are here and here. Gallery photos are below.