 The U.S. War Department supported the syndication of Bill Mauldin's cartoons because Mauldin was making the war appear bitter and onerous, showing that the victory would not be easy.His depiction of U.S. soldiers with disheveled appearances and sad, vacant eyes conveyed the difficulty of the war.Until 1944, the mayhem of war (dead and wounded) was mostly toned down by American propagandists, who followed instructions allowing them to show a "few" wounded soldiers in a crowd.