jtcm

Hi badgerdog: You served in real Shermans ? Are you a WWII or Korea Vet ? Best j

You're welcome. i was surprised he was still alive, saddened by the news about his long years of decline, pleased by the idea that he had been opposed to Bush I, and impressed that his cartoons irritated Patton. best wishes jtcm

The cartoonist Bill Mauldin just died, tis is the NYTimes obit for him. And he was a good, firecely passionate liberal too., **** ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 23, 2003 Bill Mauldin, Cartoonist Who Showed World War II Through G.I. Eyes, Dies at 81 By RICHARD SEVERO ill Mauldin, the Army sergeant who created Willie and Joe, the cartoon characters who became enduring symbols of the grimy, irrepressible American infantrymen who triumphed over the German army and prevailed over their own rear-echelon officers in World War II, died yesterday in Newport Beach, Calif. He was 81. The cause was pneumonia, his family said. Mr. Mauldin had been suffering from Alzheimer's disease. After Willie and Joe won the war, Mr. Mauldin became a syndicated newspaper cartoonist and went on for more than 50 years to caricature bigots, superpatriots, doctrinaire liberals and conservatives and pompous souls in whatever form they appeared. He won the Pulitzer Prize twice, once in 1944 for his World War II work, again in 1959 for his commentary on Soviet treatment of Boris Pasternak. Mr. Mauldin gave up regular cartooning assignments in the early 1990's, complaining that arthritis made drawing too difficult. He frequently lamented that editorial cartoonists were too soft and that more of them needed to be "stirrer-uppers." Mr. Mauldin worked full time at being a stirrer-upper, and while he was on duty nobody was safe from his editorial brush. During the war, he excoriated self-important generals, grassy green "90-day wonders," insensitive drill sergeants, palate-dulled mess sergeants, glamour-dripping Air Force pilots in leather jackets, and cafe owners in liberated countries who rewarded the thirsty G.I.'s who had freed them by charging them double for brandy. He was nothing short of beloved by his fellow enlisted men. But no Mauldin characters were more memorable than Willie and Joe, the unshaven, listless, dull-eyed, cynical dogfaces who spent the war fighting the Germans, trying to keep dry and warm and flirting with insubordination. They were the stars of "Up Front," Mr. Mauldin's wartime best seller, and their exploits were reported regularly in various service publications, including Stars and Stripes and the 45th Division News. Their likenesses were found in pup tents and bivouacs from Brittany to Berlin, tacked up next to the inevitable glossies of those other G.I. favorites, Betty Grable and Dorothy Lamour. Mr. Mauldin began his sojourn with the 45th, which arrived in North Africa and fought into Italy, but he sampled many divisions and places as his fame grew. Willie and Joe were the guys who always got sentry duty when it rained or snowed and shrapnel in their backsides whenever they left their foxholes. It was they who contended with lice and fleas, complained constantly about the K rations they were supposed to eat, slept in rat-infested barns, never seemed to find the soap when they had the rare opportunity to bathe, and suffered the incessant, grinding, morale-destroying boredom that only the infantry soldier knows. The only thing that could never be questioned about Willie and Joe was their determination to survive and win. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme Allied commander, looked forward to their adventures, and Gen. Mark Clark so appreciated them that he saw to it that Mr. Mauldin got a specially equipped Jeep in Italy so that he could go where he wanted and draw what he wished. Ernie Pyle, one of the G.I.'s favorite correspondents, termed Mr. Mauldin the best cartoonist of the war because he drew pictures of the men who were "doing the dying," even though nobody could ever kill Willie and Joe. Gen. George S. Patton was one of a small minority who had no use for them. He liked his heroes cleanshaven and obedient, and he was uneasy that the men who served under him revered the likes of such unorthodoxy. Asked toward the end of the war to comment on Sergeant Mauldin's cartoons, General Patton replied, "I've seen only two of them, and I thought they were lousy." Mr. Mauldin's representations have endured in unforgettable images and words: "Just gimme a coupla aspirin. I already got a Purple Heart," says a weary Joe to a corpsman seated at a table containing medicine and medals. "He's right Joe," says Willie after a superior admonishes them for the slovenly way they look. "When we ain't fightin' we should ack like sojers." "Must be a tough objective," says Willie to Joe as they huddle on the side of a road, weapons ready. "Th' old man says we're gonna have th' honor of liberatin' it." Joe was created first by Mr. Mauldin, well before Pearl Harbor. Joe was never an angel, but at least he was a cleanshaven, well-scrubbed young man, and he appeared in various Army publications, especially the 45th Division News. After Dec. 7, 1941, he met Willie, and the two went through the Italian campaign together, becoming disreputable in their personal habits. During training Joe was a "Choctaw Indian with a hooked nose, and Willie was his rednecked straight man," Mr. Mauldin once recalled. "As they matured overseas during the stresses of shot, shell and K rations, and grew whiskers because shaving water was scarce in mountain foxholes, for some reason Joe seemed to become more of a Willie and Willie more of a Joe." Willie and Joe and their creator made the cover of Time magazine in 1945 — the year after Mr. Mauldin won his first Pulitzer — and he came home from the war a celebrity. He had made a lot of money but wasn't very happy. "I never quite could shake off the guilt feeling that I had made something good out of the war," he said. After the war, Mr. Mauldin seemed lost for a time. He covered the Korean War briefly for Collier's but was not entirely pleased with his work. He resuscitated Joe, made him a war correspondent and had him writing letters to the stateside Willie. In 1958 he visited Dan Fitzpatrick, editorial cartoonist for The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, who disclosed that he was planning to retire. Mr. Mauldin applied for the job, got it and won a second Pulitzer Prize in 1959 for a cartoon on the plight of the Russian author Boris Pasternak. The cartoon showed two prisoners in Siberia, one of whom said to the other: "I won the Nobel Prize for Literature. What was your crime?" Mr. Mauldin remained with The Post-Dispatch until 1962, when he joined The Chicago Sun-Times. He seemed to regain his old form and was regarded as one of the most influential cartoonists of his day. "If I see a stuffed shirt, I want to punch it," Mr. Mauldin once said. "If it's big, hit it. You can't go far wrong." From his point of view, too many newspaper artists tended to "regard editorial cartooning as a trade instead of a profession." "They try not to be too offensive," he said. "The hell with that." Besides segregationists, redbaiters and dictators, Mr. Mauldin used his pen to strike at the Ku Klux Klan and veterans' organizations that he thought were too far to the right. He later said he thought he had gone too far in his denunciations and "became a bore." Many newspapers agreed and began to drop his syndicated cartoons. He became an advocate for veterans and joined the American Veterans Committee, which saw itself as an alternative to more traditional organizations like the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. He served two terms as its president in the 1950's. Mr. Mauldin did not confine his activities to drawing. His postwar book "Back Home" was as much a job of writing as it was drawing, and it received good reviews on both counts. He also appeared in two movies, both made in 1951. One was John Huston's "Red Badge of Courage," with Audie Murphy, the most decorated hero of the war. Mr. Mauldin received good reviews, but the movie failed at the box office. The other was "Teresa," directed by Fred Zinnemann. In the middle 1950's he moved to Rockland County in New York, and in 1956 he ran unsuccessfully for Congress against the incumbent in the 28th District, a conservative Republican named Katharine St. George. Mr. Mauldin, a Democrat, thought of himself as the left-of-center candidate. "Up Front" was republished in a 50th anniversary edition in 1995. Among Mr. Mauldin's other books were "A Sort of a Saga," 1949; "Bill Mauldin's Army," 1951; "Bill Mauldin in Korea," 1953; "What's Got Your Back Up," 1961; "I've Decided I Want My Seat Back," 1965; and "The Brass Ring," 1972. He also illustrated many articles for Life magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, Sports Illustrated and other publications. Mr. Mauldin married Norma Jean Humphries in 1942. They were divorced in 1946. The following year he married Natalie Sarah Evans, who died in a car accident. In 1972 he married Christine Lund. His survivors also include his seven sons; a daughter died in 2001, The Associated Press reported. William Henry Mauldin was born Oct. 29, 1921, in Mountain Park, N.M., one of two sons born to Sidney Albert Mauldin, a handyman, and Edith Katrina Bemis Mauldin. As a child, he suffered from rickets, a disease caused by a deficiency of vitamin D, and was unable to engage in strenuous activity. His head seemed too big for his spindly body. When he was 8 he heard one of his father's friends say, "If that was my son, I'd drown him." Mr. Mauldin never forgot the insult and turned all his energy to teaching himself how to draw. His family moved to Phoenix, and while he was still in high school there he enrolled in a correspondence cartoon school. He left high school without getting a diploma, moved to Chicago and continued his studies at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. His maternal grandmother gave him the $300 tuition fee. He moved back to Phoenix and began to sell his drawings. Some of the first were published by Arizona Highways magazine. In 1940 Mr. Mauldin also created cartoons for both sides in the Texas gubernatorial campaign. He later said he joined the Arizona National Guard to avoid the Texas politicians, who discovered he was working both sides of the fence. The Guard required no physical examination — Mr. Mauldin doubted he could ever pass one — and he was accepted. When the Arizona Guard was federalized in 1940, Mr. Mauldin found himself in the Army. He scored more than 140 on his Army I.Q. test and later said that once the Army became aware of this, it did with him what it tended to do with all bright people who become enlisted men: it gave him K.P. for four months. He managed to get a transfer to Oklahoma's 45th Division so that he could draw cartoons for the 45th Division News, first as a volunteer, later as a member of the staff. He had two war experiences after Korea. One came in 1965 when he visited his son, Bruce, a serviceman stationed in Vietnam. Mr. Mauldin wrote about an attack on Pleiku. He also visited troops in Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf war in 1991, toward the end of his career. He did not approve of the war, and his cartoons were especially hard on President George Bush. He made no further use of Willie and Joe. In the last year, as Mr. Mauldin's health and memory declined in a nursing home in Orange County, Calif., veterans of World War II were alerted to his plight by an old soldier named Jay Gruenfeld, who had fought in the Philippines. After visiting Mr. Mauldin, Mr. Gruenfeld wrote to veterans' groups and newspaper columnists, urging them to rally other veterans to write their good wishes to Mr. Mauldin. Thousands of letters arrived, many with sentiments that boiled down to the brief salutation in one message: "From one old dogface to another. Thanks for the memories." Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Permissions | Privacy Policy

Fionn We're on the same wavelength there I think regard jtcm

To Fionn: well, yes, sources do matter, as much for events of 480 BC as of AD 1944-- otherwise, ancient history just becomes a source of edifying epigrams. It's likely Leonidas didn't say anything like this; the incident was quickly mythologized, by the Greeks themselves-- but I am v. curious to know where this particular quote comes from. So if you have any time at all, I'd be interested. But there is no rush, obviously. Giving good advice is just as important, and I'm reading yours. regards jtcm

Fionn: you're v. welcome. Actually, I was wondering where the second part of your sig comes from: sounds like Plutarch or Diodorus, certainly not in Herodotus, the main, earliest and most reliable source. But I'm being a prig, or worse.

Moon: you're right, it's a philosophical question in the end. Representibility of war and all that. BTW I was a great admirer of your first AAR against Fionn in 1999 (I think). Sand Digger: re machine guns, there is an extraordinary account in M. van Creveld, I think the transformation of war, discussing eye wtiness accounts of Japanese charges against Russian MGs ((in 1905)-- by speed, dispersion, irregular movement and coordinated movement of units, the Japanese troos managed (apparently) to run through beaten zones and close in with Russian trenches and take them in close combat. Apparently this is one of the "lessons learnt" taken in by military thinkers pre-WWI (with rather mixed results...). But the point is that the CMBO model of MGs /might/ not be as bad as usually thought; at least, this balances out the "HMG holds up battalion" stories. Best j

I've played a few games with Franko rules, including some armoured recon actions in TCP. I didn;t have the "proprio-centric perception" (I think that's the word)-- i could't tell which way was forward and which was was back, and had a terrible awareness of my surroundings and spatial relations. We ended foundering around; at the end of the game, in view 4, we found out we'd somehow managed to turn and twist into completely bizarre places (Oh that's where that tank was). Not so realistic either...

Fionn: it's "Qui tacet, consentire videtur", not "Que tacet" [this from a professional classicist. I'm terrible at CM, but still know Latin for my job]

I've read After The Battle sporadically over the years. I didn't know it went back so far in time: 1970s ? Gosh. It's often a very moving magazine, and sometimes the effects (superposing photos, v. careful on the ground topograhical work) are startling, e.g. showing how different, how rural, France and Germany still were, before the big boom years of the 1960s. In that particular issue of ATB I'm referring to, there also is an incredible moment, when TF Baum speeds past a troop train: when the German troops realizes they're on a parallel path to an US column, they all poke their rifles and start shooting out of windows, and a crew uncovers a flak battery on a flatbed... A Stuart in TF baum then drives ahead, crosses the tracks in the path of the oncoming train, and puts a 37mm shell in the locomotive engine... (Again something i'd like to see in CMBO). Anyway, every one here assures me that CMBO is quite realistic. But HOW DO WE KNOW ? None of us has been in combat in 1944-1945; we're dealing with an imagined, self-coherent world made up of parameters and "puzzle pieces" thrown together in a mix that works. But so does GTA.

Don't get me wrong, I like CMBO, it's far better than any wargame I've played, LOS is handled brilliantly, and I mean BRILLIANTLY, CC, small unit tactics, doctrine, and historical accuracy; and I'm sure I'll like CMBB too, and CMPW (Pacific War) and CMMOR (March on Rome) and the Khalkin-Gol module when these all come out (I made these titles up, of course). I read the Singling Shootout AAR a while back, I seem to recall it being posted in this forum. I enjoyed it then, and now, but frankly, I find it a little difficult to relate to CMBO: this is exactly the sort of evidence that made me feel a little dubious about the "realism" thing. But i'll try the experiment again. I like John Salt's point about realism v. credibility (incidentlly. John. I seem to remember excellent posts by you in the sci.military.moderated usenet group, but haven't checked that in yonks). Part of the problem, of course, is what allows us to judge. A simulation of my daily life (popping round to the shops, cycling in traffic, writing a post to a bulletin board) would be something easy for me to judge (albeit very boring); I've never been in combat (thank the Lord), so how can i judge ? The magazine "After the battle" ran a long article once on the Hammelburg raid, an incredibly detailled and straightforward piece of narrative. The strangeness of battle came through quite clearly; also much that would be un-reproducible in CMBO: the first attempt by the US forces to breach the German main line of resistance, in which a Sherm is hit by a faust, the crew bails out, some Germans then jump in the tank and man it against US troops; TF Baum simply driving through a enemy held village, all guns blazing; TF Baum moving up a long, long incline under fire from a Hetzer plt (Baum simply orders his troops to zoom past, at 600 m range, and loses a few HTs at most); a Schreck team sneaking up to the tank lager and knocking out a Stuart at very close range, before melting back into the darkness; TF Baum's doomed attempt at breaking out, in the night. (not to mention the bizarre speech given by the German who captures Abe Baum, and reminisces about Newport, Conn., where he lived before the war-- this after carefully shooting the unarmed and surrendering Baum in the thigh, the bullet nicking Baum's left testicle. But I digress).

Put it this way: is chess realistic ?

Thanks for the replies. I agree that the tension is there, and the realism. But I think I meant something else, which all these replies haven't quite addressed, and which i find it difficult to formulate. In fact, how would you judge "realism" ? You set out to make a computer game. You have certain parameters, you tweak and snip and cut, but what are you comparing to, striving to attain ? You play your homunculi in the computer simulation, until they behave coherently in the imagined world of the computer game; but how do you test realism, as opposed to certain traits of behaviour rewarded or punished in an arbitrary, if consistent, system ? Again on a simpler level: does anyone know of an AAR for e.g. a Co-level infantry attack by US, where behaviour appears that is clearly matched by CMBO ? E.g. German infantry holding inside of woods to mount highly effective close range ambushes, or mortars followed by immediate counter-attack ? When you play the Wittman scenario, you get killed immediately: non-reproducibility of results ?

Thanks for the answers. I suppose a Command level game would be quite interesting. But I think i meant something else. I just haven't read enough Plt and Co level AARs (as opposed to memoirs or written up accounts) to figure out what really happens in e.g. an infantry engagement. Say you have a plt and you're moving to contact: i think i know how to do it in CMBO (more or less). But i still can't relate that to e.g. what i've seen from b/w "combat photographs" or from e.g. BoB's desaturated images of people running around (e.g the destruction of the 105 mm battery in the first hours after the jump). Or something even simpler. Are there any AARs or army intelligence 9e.g. in the post-war debriefings and volumes of "small unit actions" written up re ETO or PTO) saying "Germans used to fight from reverse slopes, where their dominance in SMGs allowed them to win firefights". JasonC once posted a real AAR: incredibly messy, slow, frustrating affair; one had the feeling that all these real life tankers and infy officers would have made v. poor CMBO players.

Before you jump me and tell me how it's painstakingly researched even though MGs are undermodelled why don't you buy CMBB and the Borg spotting is a problem but how else to solve it etc etc-- I know all that. After playing CMBO for a while, and getting a littl ebit of the hang-- keep armour back, arty before contact, mass forces, hunt armour when it's engaged elsewhere, scout carefully, button up armour before engaging it with zooks or Schrecks, move in close with SMGs, fight on reverse slopes, concentrate fires, defeat enemy piecemeal, etc ?-- I'm starting to wonder what relation this has with any sort of lived experience. At the most basic level: are there any Co sized or smaller AARs that illustrate these ? E.g. close range defence, German superiority of ? Or the various decisions say taken by a Lt or a Major ? (feint here, concentrate there). I can think of Rommel's "Infantry attacks", but also of P., Fussell's description of his own infantry experience in ETO-- sheer incompetence, terror and crudeness of tactics. In other words, CMBO is starting to feel more like chess. Do you see what I mean ?

We sneaked in close, through some woods that stretched south of the village, all the way to the road. Through the trees we could here the engines and the tracks of the American armour. Suddenly we saw them, through the treeline: a few armoured cars, a big fat Sherman sitting in the middle of the road, its back turned to us. The Hauptsturmbahnfuehrer took over the tank hunting team himself. They crept up to 150 m, each second wondering whether they would be spotted, then they fired. Old Schmidt took the shot first-- Ostfront veteran, 5 T-34s to his name-- and missed. The Volkstuermer Schreck team then fired- two seventeen year olds-- and brewed up the Sherman. All hell breaks loose; the armoured cars turn their heavy machine guns on us, the Volksturmer break and run, or fall. Another Sherman surges forward. But then it's all over: a tank hunter team takes out the Sherman when it pushes too far; our own armour drives forward, shooting up the armoured cars and yet another Sherman. The enemy infantry is in houses, in the village, exchanging fire with two squads of Volksturmer sent on the right flank. The Pz-IVs need only lob a few shells into the village for the enemy infantry to surrender. We fall back with nearly a full plt. of prisoners.

Schaefer to HQ. Have reached the village. Have surprised and destroyed a US recon. element (tank platoon, AC platoon, infy platoon). Enemy infantry captured. Volksturm plt. performed very creditably (on flank sweep found and destroyed enemy anti-tank screen and engaged enemy main infantry body).

Herr Hauptsturmbahnfuehrer, take your company over to this village (stab at map), see if there is any enemy activity, and report back. Two Pz-IVs will provide support. Oh, and there is a platoon of Volkstuermer who want to join in the fun, maybe you'll find something to do with them. That is all.

From that photograph, judging from the angle of the MG barrel, it looks like the MG is firing at some target at long range (or perhaps a church steeple ?)

Well, i think that's the piece of evidence everyone was looking for-- someone exiting turret to man the .50, against ground target-- and getting hit !

I do like the image of Olive Oyl as a Sherman tanker, though.

Thanks for that clarification. So for AA use, the TC actually stays inside the cupola ? But does he actually see anything ? How is he meant to sight a plane, e.g. with a sufficiently large field of fire for deflection shooting ? Did someone sight for the 50 gunner ? I find the whole process difficult to visalize (like so much in war...)-- not to say i disagree with M. Dorosh, I think he's made a good point, just that I can't understand the concrete processes. Coming back to .50 use against ground targets: how does that work ? The tank stops in a woodline, the TC pops his head up, says to his people "You guys stay there, I'm out to take a leak then I'll fire off a few rounds with the .50 at that house over there" ? The whole idea of a weapons system on a tank which can't be operated from inside the armoured shell is quite peculiar (e.g. on the same principle, you could bolt on a heavy mortar, which the crew could operate in a spare moment by exiting the tank, or a coffee machine or chow wagon or a phone booth). Again, I'm not disagreeing with M. Dorosh, just saying how slightly odd I'm finding this.

So when and how DO you use the .50 ? "Gosh there's a plane about to dive bomb us / strafe our trucks, stop the tank driver, let me clamber out of the turret, squeeze past the .50, step on to the rear deck, unlock the travel lock, crank whatever needs to be cranked, where was that plane again, um how much do you need to lead by" ? or long range recon by fire against e.g. woodlines or houses ? long range fire against soft skinned targets ? suppressive fire when HE running low ? There must be a doctrinal answer, and an "experience" answer

just a note from a lurker: I would like to state my appreciation of Michael Dorosh's posts here, because of their courtesy, but also their firm insistance on scholarly standards of specific nuance (not "was the .50 never used against infy" but "was the .50 ever used as anti-personel weapon at close ranges") and of proof: not "I would have done it" or "The Ma Deuce is cool [insert anecdote here about range or penetration]" or even "Here's a photograph"; not common sense, but clear cut evidence drawn from reference to sources. Very important in military history, i think (having witnessed incredibly witless discussions on e.g. the Arjun tank or the T-72 vs M1)-- and in history in general. Sorry for pontificating.

"Patton strikes back" did come out for the Mac, I bought it, and played it some, in 1993, but it was a bit much for my beloved Mac Classic. Still, I liked the arrows, etc. I often wondered about that game-- if i could find it somewhere on the web... Incidentally, did anyone ever play a game called "Ram !" or "Ram speed", Avalon Hill, ancient oar-ships and ramming tactics ?