There's a paradox regarding my writing output.
When I'm busy, I wish I had less going on so I could write. When I'm not busy, I become bored and do everything but write.
Add in the complication of working from home (with a full house no less) and things get even more difficult.
One way I passed the time was by reading The Brass Ring by Bill Mauldin. He's all but forgotten now, but when World War II veterans were out and about, he was quite well known. His claim to fame was creating the "Willy and Joe" cartoons during World War II. These were two generic, hardened, worn-down GIs who had all sorts of iconic adventures.
Mauldin himself came from a tough upbringing in grinding poverty and set himself the unlikely goal of becoming a successful and well-compensated cartoonist. His book is about the hard-scrabble days of his life, the people he met and his relentless drive to succeed.
The turning point was his decision to join the National Guard in 1940. We were still at peace, but with the fall of France and the threat of war growing, FDR declared a national emergency and ordered the National Guard into federal service. A crash program of rearmament began and the US began desperately expanding its tiny peacetime military.
Mauldin took it all in stride and started drawing pictures for the divisional newspaper. When the division went to Europe, he continued his work and eventually ended up as a prominent figure at Stars and Stripes, which was given a new life (it had shut down after the Great War).
The key element here was that nothing like this had happened before. Mauldin was breaking new ground in demanding (and largely getting) not only artistic freedom, but a personal jeep and equipment complete with official travel passes to let him circulate around the war zone. When one of his cartoons pissed off Gen. George Patton, he was personally sent to get his ass chewed – a mission that required his jeep to be airlifted from Italy (his main base of operations) to France.
That's how big he was.
He wrote the book in 1971, now in the fullness of success. Back then he was a household name, wealthy beyond his wildest dreams and the godfather of military public affairs. There's a clear line from him to me – though I work with words rather than pictures.
The particular copy I read used to belong to my grandfather, and I inherited it on his death. He was in the Army during WW II, though stationed stateside. Apparently he liked Mauldin, and convinced my father to buy a copy as well. I remember seeing it on my dad's bookshelf and until someone mentioned it in passing, I didn't recall having a copy. It came with a church bulletin from 1972.
Anyhow, it's an interesting look to a time when American were under far greater privation and the big takeaway was that we got out of it largely through the efforts of people for whom quitting was unthinkable. Initially, Mauldin – like others – had his back against the wall, facing poverty and starvation.
But once things eased, he continued to press forward relentlessly, determined to grab that brass ring.
Chateau Lloyd 
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