Willie & Joe: Back Home

In the summer of 1945, a great tide of battered soldiers began flowing back to the United States from around the globe. Though victorious, these exhausted men were nevertheless too grief-stricken over the loss of comrades, too guilt-ridden that they had survived, and too numbed by trauma to share in the country’s euphoria. Most never saw a ticker-tape parade, or stole a Times Square kiss. All they wanted was to settle back into quiet workaday lives without fear. How tragic that the forces unleashed by World War II made this simple wish impossible.

Willie Joe: Back Home chronicles the struggles and disillusionments of these early postwar years and tells Bill Mauldin’s own story of his journey home to a wife he barely knew and a son he had only seen in pictures. The drawings capture the texture of this confusing time: the ubiquitous hats and cigarettes, domestic tensions, rising fears of another war, and conflicts over Civil Rights, civil liberties, and free speech. This volume reprints Mauldin’s work, including cartoons censored for their attacks on racial segregation and McCarthy-style witch hunts, showcasing his fight through pen and ink.