Wartime Observations: WWII Drawings

An amateur artist, Henry Hellert documented his European “tour of duty” with the 193rd Infantry Division of the US Army. His drawings start with training at Camp Atterbury, then Wales, before crossing the English Channel to Normandy. He served as a scout, fighting battle after battle in Northern France, Luxembourg, Bavaria, Belgium, Holland and across Northern Germany almost to Berlin, where the unit stopped at a bridgehead at the Oder River to let the Russians take Berlin. Despite losses in many battles, Hellert continued to draw, using whatever paper he could carry or find, from posters to maps, wrapping paper, and sketchbooks. Also in the show are works he did long after the war in the fifties and sixties, which call up interesting issues of remembrance of the war, and how his style was revised and transformed from the observational to a form derived from comics.

(Courtesy of the Indiana Military Museum, Vincennes, IN)