Bill Mauldin

Bill Mauldin
Bill Mauldin : Editor’s note: Bob Greene, CNN contributor, is the best-selling author’s new book is “Late Edition: A Love Story.”

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

With a new attempt to get rid of Saturday mail delivery, and is expected to intensify their complaints.

But the United States Postal Service deserves a standing ovation for something that will happen this month: Bill Mauldin is getting his own postage stamps.

Mauldin died at the age of 81 in the first days of 2003. At the end of his life had been rough. Was scalded in the bathtub, which led to horrific injuries and infections; Alzheimer’s disease is causing severe. Unable to care for himself after the feast, he became a resident of California nursing home, and his health and spirits in rapid decline.

He was not forgotten, though. Mauldin, and his work, means a lot to the millions of Americans who fought in World War II, and to those who were waiting to return home. The cartoonist, children with knowledge, the military newspaper; graphics generators have muddy, exhausted, longitudinal – stubbled infantry and Willie Joe is the voice of the truth about what it was in the front lines.

Mauldin was a normal person just like the soldiers and pointed to; complaint have had colic, he was laughing the laugh, and he had a heartache, and heartache. It’s one of them. Love him.

The cartoonist beloved by the soldiers and men of the regular

He did not take place. Sometimes, when you reduce fees too close for comfort, and his superiors and tried to tone on his hands and feet. In a single incident does not forget, he angered General George S.. Button, Button, and Flag Mauldin said he wants the charges and pointed out – celebrated fighting men, making a mockery of high-ranking officers – to stop. Now.

News transmitted from one soldier to soldier. How was Sgt. Bill Mauldin going to stand up to General Patton? It seemed impossible.

Not quite. Generators, it turned out, was an ardent fan: a five-star Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, supreme commander of allied forces in Europe. Ike put out the word: Mauldin Mauldin went what he wants. Mauldin won. Lost Button.

If, in your line of work, you might think of yourself as a hotshot young people, or if you have ever known someone who has felt that way about himself or herself, the story of young manhood Mauldin humble you. Here is what, in the time he was 23 years old, has completed two generators:

Won the Pulitzer Prize. He appeared on the cover of Time magazine. Book “in the line of attack,” he was not. 1 bestseller in the United States.

All in 23. But when he returned to civilian life, and when old, he never lost that boyish smile generators, he never outgrew his happiness about the performance of his functions, but it is not large or well-shotted toppers of the people with whom he worked every day.

I was lucky enough to be one of them; generators wandering in the halls of the Chicago Sun-Times in the late 1960s and early 1970s without further bullying or air of arrogance than if copyboy. Demonic that seem on the face is still there.

There has been a lot. He won the second Pulitzer Prize, and he should have won in the third, for what may be the greatest editorial board and one in the history of the craft: the deadline set by them, the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, the statue at the Lincoln Memorial down in sadness, and its shaky in her hand. But he did not act as if he was better than the people he met. Was still two generators of the recruiter.

During the late summer of 2002, and two generators is that the state of California nursing home, and some of the old comrades of World War II infantry caught wind of it. They do not want to get out two generators in this way. They believe he must know he is still a hero.

Gordon Dillow, a columnist for the Orange County Register, put out the call in Southern California to the people in the region to send their best wishes to the two generators; Dillow joined in the effort, which helps to spread the appeal so that a national bill that would not feel so alone. Soon more than 10,000 letters and cards that arrived in two generators at the hospital.