Doonesbury's War

Trudeau has been talking to injured vets for a couple of years now. It's partly compassionate support for people he has a genuine regard for, and it's part journalism -- the damnedest sort of reporting, for a professional cartoonist.

This was April 25. On the comics pages that day, Dagwood fixed himself an absolutely ENORMOUS sandwich; Garfield kicked Odie off the table again; and in Beetle Bailey, the only military-themed comic strip, Lt. Fuzz accidentally dropped a glass of water and cussed in funny cartoon hieroglyphics.

In Doonesbury, this was the story: B.D., the football coach and Vietnam vet who went to Iraq with the National Guard and lost a leg in a rocket-grenade attack near Fallujah, has been shamed into entering therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder because he overheard his little girl, Sam, tell a friend that she'd become afraid of her daddy. On this day, B.D. will begin to relive the battlefield event he has repressed, the one that made him a moody, alcoholic paranoiac and that torments him with guilt and shame that he does not understand. Through the rest of the week, B.D. will retell what happened when his armored vehicle came under attack from insurgents and -- desperate to escape and save himself and his men -- he gave the order to flee through a crowded marketplace, mowing down civilians.

Not many of the injured vets in Fran O'Brien's were where B.D. was yet. Their deepest wounds, like the dots, had not yet surfaced. On that day they were jovial, mostly, and indomitable, all of them, stolid and impervious, more so than the moms, wives and girlfriends who hovered at their elbows, lovingly kneading shoulders, patting thighs, holding on, looking bravely upbeat and just a little overwhelmed.

Trudeau bellied up to another vet.

"So, when were you hit?"

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IF YOU DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT GARRY TRUDEAU, AND YOU PROBABLY DON'T, it's because he has done his best to keep it that way. With the exception of the time in 1980 when his island wedding to America's sweetheart, TV personality Jane Pauley, turned him into a sullen bridegroom hounded by paparazzi in boats and helicopters, Trudeau, now 58, has managed to remain comfortably obscure. Aside from a couple of semi-recent TV interviews, he's had almost no public presence for three decades. Considering the extraordinary reach of his comic strip, and the role it has had over the years in analyzing, reflecting and even helping shape American culture, he may be the most famous unknown person.

It's an odd type of fame, one that attaches hungrily to what you do but not at all to who you are. Take this woman here, at a lunch counter in the Dallas/Fort Worth airport. Her name is Connie Dubois. A candle maker, Connie lives in Ethel, La., pop. 2,000, a fleck on the map of East Feliciana Parish, which itself contains only two traffic lights. Connie, who is 50, has just flown on a plane for the first time in her life, heading to a trade show for candle makers.

"Do you know what 'Doonesbury' is? I ask her.

"Sure," she says, putting down her sandwich. "It's a cartoon. In the paper. Been around a long time. It's a little off-center and radical, and I like that."

"Do you know the name of the guy who draws it?"