Up Front by Bill Mauldin

"Up Front" by Bill Mauldin (228 pages)
Up Front by Bill Mauldin offers a very insightful and at times humorous glimpse of the "dog faced" foot soldier. His style of writing is almost similar to that of Ernie Pyle in his descriptions and background information of the cartoons that he did for Stars and Stripes which are included in this book. It is hard not to chuckle at these works of art as they are filled with dark humor as they explore a lot of what the dog faced foot soldier goes through from French drivers in convoys (whom he he describes as only knowing about the general direction of the foot throttle and that they only stop by smashing into others bumpers) to how much a lot of the officers and MPs pissed them off.

One of my favorite incidents that he describes is how a group of infantryman came together to support a medic who had his combat badge taken away from him by the "brass hats" and they were all saying things about the brass hats which included insults and voices of support for the medic. One of the soldiers said "Wait'll Ernie Pyle hears about this."

Filled with dark humor and great cartoons, what makes this even better is that Bill Mauldin was an enlisted man himself just like the "dog faced" soldiers around him, giving himself a deep understanding of the frustrations and hard times the foot soldier around him went through even at the age of 23. I would highly recommend this book to any history buff as it is one of the best books to come out of the war. It is also a quick read.

 

Yeah, I read it in high school, and again when I was in LSU for a WW2 history class. Great book. Got it right there with the rest of my WW2 reference books on my bookshelf.