"WAR THROUGH THE EYES OF ARTISTS"

HOST: Rear Admiral Gene LaRocque (USN, Ret.)

Director, Center for Defense Information

INTERVIEWER Sanford Gottlieb, Senior Producer,

& NARRATOR: "America's Defense Monitor"

MARKETING

& OPERATIONS: Mark Sugg

PRODUCERS: Matthew Hansen

Nick Moore

Lori McRea

Daniel Sagalyn

PRINCIPAL ANALYST

& SCRIPTWRITER: Sanford Gottlieb

PROGRAM PRODUCER: Nick Moore

ORIGINATION: Washington, D.C.

PROGRAM NO.: 438

CONDITION OF USE: Credit "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR"

(Center for Defense Information).

(C) Copyright 1991, Center for Defense Information. All Rights

Reserved.

Videotapes also available.

For further information, contact: CENTER FOR DEFENSE INFORMATION

"WAR THROUGH the EYES of ARTISTS" Features:

__________________________________________

JIM FAIRFAX Combat Artist (Vietnam)

MARYLOU GJERNES Army Art Curator, US Army Center of

Military History

JOHN CHARLES ROACH Combat Artist (Vietnam, Persian Gulf)

ALEXANDER RUSSO Combat Artist (World War II)

NARRATOR: Marines call it "that 2000-yard stare." This Marine's battle fatigue at Peliliu in the Pacific during World War II was hauntingly captured on canvas by LIFE Magazine artist Tom Lea. The invasion of Peliliu was one of the Marines bloodiest battles. The artist wrote the following notes about the real-life Marine who was his subject:

He left the States 31 months ago. He was wounded in his

first campaign. He has had tropical diseases. He half-

sleeps at night and gouges Japs out of holes all day.

Two-thirds of his company has been killed or wounded. He

will return to attack this morning. How much can a human

being endure?

Admiral GENE LaROCQUE: Welcome once again to "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR."

It is often said that war is the most exhilarating experience that an individual can have. War is many things to many people. Art somehow captures the spirit of war better than photographs, even better than narrative. War, with all its heroism, its valor and glory, can be captured by artists, and I've seen much of it and so have you. But artwork also is able to capture the viciousness, the vulgarity, the meanness, the horror of war like no other medium can.

We've been in a lot of wars in this country and we've been fortunate that our artists have captured much of this experience that we've had in war. I think you're going to find our program today on this subject interesting and completely different.

NARRATOR: Artists have been portraying their impressions of war for centuries: From battles between Egyptians and Nubians, to the ancient Greeks. From medieval sieges and battles to 20th Century world wars.

In America's wars, too, artists have recorded the clash of arms, the bravery, the fear, the death, the destruction:

The Battle of Bunker's Hill during the Revolutionary War. The bombardment of Fort McHenry during the war of 1812 against England that inspired Francis Scott Key to write "The Star Spangled Banner."

The war with Mexico that resulted in the acquisition of Texas by the United States. Our own bitter four-year long Civil War. The Spanish-American War that made the United States a colonial power.

World War I. World War II. Vietnam. The war with the Iraq.

During World War I, the Army created the first official combat artists in the American armed forces. These were artists who were sent by the military to paint what they saw, before photographers could make a sharp, clear record of soldiers in action.

In Korea, there were undoubtedly some artists who documented the war. But unlike the situation in the two world wars, the US Army did not have an official art program in Korea.

MARYLOU GJERNES: The first official army program began in World War I, 1918. World War II, the Corps of Engineers directed the program using both military and civilian artists. In Vietnam, we did the program again, this time starting with civilian artists and then adding the military artists. All the artists basically given the same kinds of instructions, which was to paint what they saw and participated in.

NARRATOR: Marylou Gjernes is Army Art Curator at the

US Army Center of Military History.

Ms. GJERNES: A combat artist is an artist who goes to the front with the soldiers, or lives with the soldiers and partici-pates in their life, as well as recording it.

NARRATOR: Even as photography improved, the armed forces continued to want artists to paint the reality of war from a variety of personal perspectives.

INTERVIEWER: Could you compare this art form with the effects of photography or movies?

Ms. GJERNES: Each in its own way is very powerful and each in its own way speaks to the viewer. But there is, again, some-thing about knowing that an individual picked up a pencil or picked up a brush and applied their concept, their vision of what was going on to a piece of paper, a piece of canvas. Again --

INTERVIEWER: Perhaps more personal?

Ms. GJERNES: I think it's more personal. A camera can record what it sees and does it very well, but an artist can put more of his own emotion into it. A photographer can get a lot of emotion into his work, but again he's still recording what is actually there.

NARRATOR: All branches of the armed forces now have their own artists. Unbeknownst to most Americans, the military has been a patron of the arts for decades.

Alexander Russo was in the Navy in 1944 when he volunteered to document the allied landing in Normandy from up close as a combat artist.

ALEXANDER RUSSO: I was assigned to Naval Intelligence to make maps and models of assault areas in Normandy -- a second time in Normandy. I had done the same thing for Sicily, the invasion of Sicily. So, when our work was completed in England --We were stationed in London preparing last minute intelligence data to be used by advance base combat ships and landing craft. That was completed and I was supposed to have gone back to Norfolk, Virginia with my unit. And I liked the European theater and I really wanted to stay there. So, I volunteered to go in on the landings and was given permission to do this. I got special orders to go aboard a landing craft, and this was on

D-plus 2. I had a sketch book and didn't even have a camera at that time. My sketch book, and a pistol, and myself and this tremendous interest to see what was going to happen. And I also wanted to check off some of the gun emplacements that we had notated on our maps and, you know, landing craft data. So, that's how I got into it.

And I was on Omaha Beach for two days. I slept in a foxhole. I went into two little towns. Rivielles Mer and Covielles Mer where there was still some sniping activity and our troops were moving in pretty fast. So, I recorded all that. Some of the landing craft had been destroyed. The snipers, some of whom had been shot, and the prisoners of war. There was a fantastic panorama of activities then and I recorded as much of this as I could by quick sketches.

Later, I supplemented the sketches by photographic data, so I could actually get the details of a half-track, for instance, or any other equipment that I had made a quick sketch of but, of course, couldn't fill in from memory all this stuff.

Ms. GJERNES: There were nineteen civilian artists and twenty-some military artists that were first assigned to do historical artwork in World War II. The program lasted about six months, at which point the funding was cut off. The soldier-artists were reassigned to headquarters companies. They were Special Services, Public Affairs, these kinds of groups, where many of them could continue to paint and continue the concept of the program.

The civilian artists were out of work. LIFE Magazine offered to pick-up the contracts of as many of them as were interested. Most of them went with LIFE Magazine as war corres-pondents, continuing Army transportation support, and so on. In 1960, LIFE Magazine gave the Department of Defense the program, over a thousand pieces that were produced in that program.

Mr. RUSSO: A lot of it was suffering, a lot of it was death; that was part of the whole scene. The victory, I don't know. Someone else recorded the victory and -- or victories, as it were. But when you're in battle, I think you see all the tragic elements of it, and the heroic elements of it, too.

It's like another lifetime, but it's still burned in my memory to such an extent that if I want to put myself back there, I can, and -- you know, I don't feel very good about going back because it was an unfortunate circumstance all the way around. I'm glad we won. I'm glad the Allies won and I think certainly there were many heroic people involved in it, many sacrifices made.

I lived in London for awhile during the bombings, the V-2 bombings, and helped people carry their belongings out of their homes as their homes were being destroyed. Civilians under fire in London, right? We haven't seen that here. I think we're very lucky not to have experienced that kind of tragedy.

NARRATOR: World War II, with its global sweep, human drama and massive destructiveness, provided combat artists with an unparalleled variety of gripping subjects.

But not everything was grim. There were some light-hearted moments amidst the suffering.

The armed forces' sponsorships of artwork during World War II had its roots not only in the experience of the First World War, but also in the Depression of the 1930s. The federal government had hired artists in the WPA, the Works Progress Administration. Some of the WPA art still exists in and on public buildings.

Ms. GJERNES: Many of the artists that had been working on that project were doing their work on Army installations at the time the war started. And many of them enlisted or were drafted into the service and into the Special Services, which was the arts and crafts shops, the Signal Corps, those kinds of things.

INTERVIEWER: These had been people who had been hired by the government directly, right? In the 30s.

Ms. GJERNES: In the 30s, yes. Initially, they had been WPA people. The art community, both within and without the government felt that this was a good thing and they wanted to keep it going as a documentation of what was happening in the world.

NARRATOR: Jim Fairfax, a 20-year Marine veteran, became a combat artist in Vietnam. He served there from 1968 to 1970.

JIM FAIRFAX: I started as a grunt. I started in a mortar platoon and anti-tank platoons, and so on. And I had the fortunate opportunity to get a little turn where I went into something at that time -- I don't even know if it exists any longer, but it was called Pioneer Battalion, which was a small engineering battalion. And then from there, showing my skills in drafting, and so on, I had the opportunity to move into things that ultimately led to me working as a fine artist.

INTERVIEWER: Do you carry a rifle or do you carry a pencil?

Mr. FAIRFAX: I carried a sidearm and pencil and camera, so I -- Yes, I had to do it all.

INTERVIEWER: Did you have to get involved at any point in combat?

Mr. FAIRFAX: I had to only be involved on a couple of occasions. Because also, being a combat artist, being attached to a unit, the unit would always have the attitude about me or any of us that they were to also look out for us so that we could carry out our mission.

INTERVIEWER: Could you tell us about this one?

Mr. FAIRFAX: Sure. This painting is titled "Christmas Tree." And this happens to be developed from a movement of Montagnard troops. And from what I understand, not being an expert on these people, that they -- Well, they're mountain people of Vietnam, but also they worship nature -- trees, the earth, so on. And what was striking to me that these three are representative of maybe a movement of a couple hundred troops. But I recall seeing this bright Christmas tree in the pack of one of these troops. And with all the drabness that was surrounding the tree, based on the red dust and so on that was so prevalent in Vietnam all over their clothes and their hair, and so on, that the tree was just extremely bright a contrast.

NARRATOR: Like Jim Fairfax, John Charles Roach was a combat artist in Vietnam. He was sent to document the activities of the Seabees, the Navy construction battalions, and also spent almost two years on ships off the coast.

JOHN CHARLES ROACH: In fact, there was no place that was safe because at night we were either shelled, mortared. I would say probably on the average of every three nights we got a couple of mortar rounds in our camp.

NARRATOR: Today Roach is a fulltime artist with a commis-sion as commander in the Naval Reserve. He has served a total of 10 years on active duty over a period of 23 years. The Navy sent Roach twice to the Persian Gulf region to record his impressions of Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

INTERVIEWER: How do you focus on an individual's emotion in war?

Cmdr. ROACH: For the most part, I try not to get into the individual, because there are several hazards that I'm very conscious of -- the invasion of the privacy. The act of war, you'd be surprised if you've never been in a war, you don't understand that privacy is one of the things that -- it's hard to find. And to invade that privacy is almost a violation of one's space, of somebody else's space. Because even among your friends, you don't reveal what is in your innermost thoughts and soul. And there's a reason for that. It's an instinct for self-preservation. So, I don't try to penetrate that, at least not often.

I violated that with one exception, and that was the beautiful painting I did of that young Marine, and there I wanted to dig, I wanted to dig deep. Because, first off, it was a once- in-a-lifetime occasion where you find an individual who is a universal individual, at least in my mind. Now this is from the painter's heart. Remember, I'm still primarily a storyteller. And in telling that story, I wanted to get as many good things work- ing for me as possible. And in that one individual, I found it.

INTERVIEWER: What do you think you captured?

Cmdr. ROACH: The soldier's question.

INTERVIEWER: His question?

Cmdr. ROACH: The question that every soldier asks of the nation who sent him: "I'm here. I don't want to be here. But I am here because I am called. And if called, I will serve and I will serve well. But I ask you in return," as that face looks at you, the viewer, "is this what I am supposed to do?"

NARRATOR: Combat artists may or may not try to penetrate the soldier's private feelings, may or may not try to pose the soldier's question, but they all deal with life and death, often in unexpected contrast.

Mr. FAIRFAX: I was with a combined action unit and their mission was really to keep track of movement of Viet Cong and also to engage the enemy, and so on, and keep the villages really, so to speak, safe. I recall one incident where these young men, with their medic, had been out this particular night engaged in firefight around the village. And they're bragging to each other of their deeds and so on in the firefight. And --

INTERVIEWER: You were with them at this time?

Mr. FAIRFAX: Right. Right. I recall something -- one was saying to the other, "Did you see me when I blew Charlie off of the dike" or the rice paddy, something of that sort. And then off in the distance, you heard some of the others calling for "Doc," the medic. And what was happening, there was a woman in one of the houses about to give birth.

So, the young medic, he goes over to the house and goes in and the other young troops are outside. And next thing, this baby is born and the young medic helped this to happen. And he came out and he told everybody that this little boy or little girl -- I don't remember right now -- but the same young troops who were bragging about what their deeds as combatants, now all of a sudden they're acting very much like young kids and uncles, and so. So, that kind of contrast. I think if I had not been an artist, some of that stuff would have missed me.

NARRATOR: What lasting value do those who produce and collect combat art see in these works?

Mr. FAIRFAX: I've had veterans see the paintings and their attitude has always been very positive in that it is part of their history and they welcome that. Now beneath that, there might be all sorts of other feelings, but never about the documenting of the history.

Ms. GJERNES: Our main purpose is to make it available for the soldier to see it and to do that, we send out exhibits through the Army museum system, through colleges and university art galleries, through public art galleries. Much of the collection has been reproduced in military history magazines and in textbooks for high schools. Many of the professors in the military schools, from the West Point Academy, the Command General Staff College, the Army War College, use slides of the collection as they teach their courses. There are many ways this collection is seen by as many people as we can get it to.

INTERVIEWER: What kind of reaction do you get?

Ms. GJERNES: We get reaction -- everything from, "Yeah, that's what it was like when I was there" to "This is right, this is what I remember, or "See, that's what it's going to be about." They identify, the soldiers really identify with this material, that it, again, goes back to the personal thing. It speaks to them.

Cmdr. ROACH: I'm painting the picture for the men and women who were there to tell the next generation what it was that they went through. And while I'm very sensitive to what the next generation's impression is going to be, I want to at least serve those people who were there, who endured the battle and the stress and the anxiety and do it to the best of their recollection.

Ms. GJERNES: It also serves as a reminder of what war is really all about. That it affects people. It's not just a matter of pushing buttons or moving paperwork divisions from one place to another, it affects people.

One thing I think we've learned is that war doesn't change. You can change the uniform, you can change the geography, you can change the equipment, but what a person goes through in combat is the same, whether it's World War I or II, or Vietnam, or whatever.

NARRATOR: What a person goes through in combat is the same, but the former combat artists carry with them very different feelings.

Cmdr. ROACH: I think the one thing that we did learn, at least certainly I did, is that the world is not a safe place for Americans, it's not a safe place for people, whether they're Americans, Kuwaitis, or anyone else. And every now and then, you have to stand up and answer the soldier's question.

Mr. RUSSO: I saw it on a small scale in Normandy and I was thinking, God, if we really have atomic warfare on a large scale, humanity is gone for. So, that's the sort of question mark painting. It's a what-will-happen-if. Nothing has happened yet, but what will happen if?

Mr. FAIRFAX: I would still love to go back to Vietnam and do something that shows some aspect of the Vietnamese army as it exists today and that particular side of the war, those who are wounded, who still suffer wounds from the war, and so on. So, it's not something that has left me as an artist. As a matter of fact, it's taken a long time just to come to terms with a lot of it and I think a lot of that is because of having served as an artist.

NARRATOR: From their different perspectives, these artists and countless others throughout the centuries have tried to show the truth about war. It's the artists' fellow citizens who then have to answer the soldier's question: Is this what the soldier is supposed to do?

CONDITION OF USE: Credit "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR"

(Center for Defense Information.)