Star Spangled Banter

Bill Mauldin (b.1921)
Star Spangled Banter
The 45th is moving into its new temporary
(we hope) field camp in the
cornfields of Camp Barkeley.
Ink and crayon over pencil
on layered paper, 1941
Published in the 45th Division News
Prints & Photographs Division
Gift of Bill Mauldin, 1975 (68A.4)

In early 1941, Bill Mauldin was a young private in the 45th Division when he moved with his fellow troops into Camp Barkeley near Abilene, Texas. Serving as a staff cartoonist, Mauldin had a talent for portraying his fellow soldiers that won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1945. Mauldin became a political cartoonist, expressing his opinions on the editorial pages of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Chicago Sun-Times from 1958 to 1992 and winning a second Pulitzer prize for cartooning in 1959. In 1975, Bill Mauldin gave the Library more than 1,700 original cartoon drawings that date from 1938 to 1965 along with his papers.