The Brass Ring
I just finished The Brass Ring: A Sort of a Memoir" by Bill Mauldin, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist who came into his own as a combat cartoonist in the European Theater in World War II. I found the volume on the 'make a donation' shelf at the used book store. This thing was published in 1971.
One of the first books I ever bought was Up Front, a collection of Mauldin's "Willy and Joe" cartoons, many of which I yet remember and which surface frequently. I remember a particular one of a GI (Joe) standing in the middle of the road, arms crossed, and a smug expression on his face. His partner Willy is with everybody else, in the bar ditch saying, "Nice work, Joe! I heard a muffled scream as he went by." It made no sense till you turned the page. A low-flying P-51 was flying away with a bayonet-ed M-1 rifle stuck in its belly. It took several viewings to understand how the pages should have been laid out, but I did figure it out.
The Brass Ring starts with a sketch of the Mauldin farmhouse in the Mountains north of Alamogordo, New Mexico, and talks of his hardscrabble days as a kid. He and his brother ran barefoot through the sand and snakes and scorpions and barbed wire, basically living the ideal life of boys till their parents divorced when Bill was fourteen or fifteen.
Bill had decided he wanted to be a cartoonist while his folks were still together, and cajoled his Grandmother into floating him a twenty-dollar loan for a correspondence course for cartoonists. His dad, hearing of this took him to meet a professional cartoonist in Cloudcroft, and Bill met his first professional . . . who traded his cartoons with every shop, tavern, and movie house . . . completely skipping the cash part.
When the family fell apart, the boys figured they were better off making their own way and headed off to board with a family in Phoenix for twenty-five dollars a month each, driving themselves there in a wired-together car with electrical tape holding one of the tires together.
Bill got his first actual art sessions in Phoenix Union High School, but he missed high school graduation by a quarter of a credit (Chemistry). So he went full time into cartooning, sign painting, and whatever he could get paid for drawing . . . including nudes for hot-rodders' spare tire covers. He joined the New Mexico National Guard just before Pearl Harbor, got federalized, wound up on the 45th Division newspaper staff, and it kind of went from there.
He went everywhere I did in Italy thirty years before I did, and a hundred more. And he has a story for everywhere.
This is not a book of starry-eyed, steely-eyed patriotic fervor. It's one man's experiences related in sketches. It puts the human face on "The Army." He tells of going into the basement for an air raid and coming back to find his room and cot shredded by broken window glass from a bomb hit across the street. He talks about the custom jeep he was issued to get to and from the front from his duty station wherever headquarters was. He writes of using zinc coffin-liner sheets to etch printing plates for his drawings.
He talks of friends made and of friends lost.
At his separation physical, the doctor started to give him a hard time about his Purple Heart, and its a good way to end this.
"The man waiting behind me, who had at some point in the past been stitched across the belly and lower chest with half a dozen machine-gun bullets, lost his temper.
'Christ, lieutenant, he didn't make the rules! We take what we're given and do what we're told.'"
It's a good read.
One of the first books I ever bought was Up Front, a collection of Mauldin's "Willy and Joe" cartoons, many of which I yet remember and which surface frequently. I remember a particular one of a GI (Joe) standing in the middle of the road, arms crossed, and a smug expression on his face. His partner Willy is with everybody else, in the bar ditch saying, "Nice work, Joe! I heard a muffled scream as he went by." It made no sense till you turned the page. A low-flying P-51 was flying away with a bayonet-ed M-1 rifle stuck in its belly. It took several viewings to understand how the pages should have been laid out, but I did figure it out.
The Brass Ring starts with a sketch of the Mauldin farmhouse in the Mountains north of Alamogordo, New Mexico, and talks of his hardscrabble days as a kid. He and his brother ran barefoot through the sand and snakes and scorpions and barbed wire, basically living the ideal life of boys till their parents divorced when Bill was fourteen or fifteen.
Bill had decided he wanted to be a cartoonist while his folks were still together, and cajoled his Grandmother into floating him a twenty-dollar loan for a correspondence course for cartoonists. His dad, hearing of this took him to meet a professional cartoonist in Cloudcroft, and Bill met his first professional . . . who traded his cartoons with every shop, tavern, and movie house . . . completely skipping the cash part. When the family fell apart, the boys figured they were better off making their own way and headed off to board with a family in Phoenix for twenty-five dollars a month each, driving themselves there in a wired-together car with electrical tape holding one of the tires together.
Bill got his first actual art sessions in Phoenix Union High School, but he missed high school graduation by a quarter of a credit (Chemistry). So he went full time into cartooning, sign painting, and whatever he could get paid for drawing . . . including nudes for hot-rodders' spare tire covers. He joined the New Mexico National Guard just before Pearl Harbor, got federalized, wound up on the 45th Division newspaper staff, and it kind of went from there.
He went everywhere I did in Italy thirty years before I did, and a hundred more. And he has a story for everywhere.
This is not a book of starry-eyed, steely-eyed patriotic fervor. It's one man's experiences related in sketches. It puts the human face on "The Army." He tells of going into the basement for an air raid and coming back to find his room and cot shredded by broken window glass from a bomb hit across the street. He talks about the custom jeep he was issued to get to and from the front from his duty station wherever headquarters was. He writes of using zinc coffin-liner sheets to etch printing plates for his drawings.
He talks of friends made and of friends lost.
At his separation physical, the doctor started to give him a hard time about his Purple Heart, and its a good way to end this.
"The man waiting behind me, who had at some point in the past been stitched across the belly and lower chest with half a dozen machine-gun bullets, lost his temper.
'Christ, lieutenant, he didn't make the rules! We take what we're given and do what we're told.'"
It's a good read.
Comments
Post a Comment