Customer Reviews

They Drew Fire: Combat Artists World War II [VHS]

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This is an outstanding and unusual video. It shows the artist/soldiers who were fighting the war and also drawing the scenes they had just participated in. I've never seen a video that depited the brutal scenes of war so vividly. We have watched it many times and have purchased many of these videos to give to others. It is amazing. I was particularly impressed by their honesty, admitting their fears and even questioning their courage. As a rifleman in Pattons Ghost Corps 94th Div. who was wounded in an assault crossing of the Saar river against the Siegfried Line, I can testify to the reality 0f the film. It should be bought and viewed by everyone in America.

Some say humans have a need to produce art. Prisoners make it; rural people with few resources produce it. Thus, it may be unsurprising that soldiers would produce art. However, the jaw-dropper for me was that Eisenhower and top military officials sought out artists and that the American people bought or supported their creations. At a time when both photography and film were available, the country encouraged soldiers to produce paintings and drawings. Wow!

The artists asked and debated questions that even dove artists and citizens have. They asked must one live a scenario in order to render it artistically. Some say no soldier can make art in the middle of an event, but one artist said that's when he'd produce his best work.

This is not a documentary with much narration or a slew of academics. It was mostly film of the war and comments from the artists themselves. Seeing them alive with missing teeth, Parkinson's disease, or legal blindness really helps to date them and may remind many viewers of their older, male relatives. This was not full of the propaganda that you would see in the Bugs Bunny or Popeye cartoons of the time. The artists drew what was around them, not devilish pictures of the enemy's leaders.

They mention a painter "from Harlem" and one painting vaguely included a Black man. However, all the interviewees were white men. Though the military was technically integrated due to the activism of civil rights leaders of the time, many historians say white and Black soldiers would fight each other more than the enemy. This documentary never asks or answers whether Black soldiers were asked to paint as their white counterparts were. The military was beginning to accept women at the time and they are not included here either.

For the most part, these artists said they could portray what they wanted. One man mentioned that his drawing of an executed German soldier was hidden from the public. However, another man said he was ordered to paint no (male) soldier in the nude. He and others said soldiers went nude due to the heat and not because of sexual reasons. Too, the documentary showed paintings where male figures were nude. Still, I wonder if the military was banning nudity in the art in order to erase or avoid homoeroticism. One painter said he painted a nude woman for a fellow soldier and that art was never censored. The American military's anti-gay ban was in effect in the 1940s and the work could have dug deeper into the homophobia of the time, but did not.

On the one hand, this may help Tom Hanks' efforts to honor World War II vets. However, I have a friend who attended West Point and criticized military recruiters for telling recruits they could draw for the military when most likely they're going to be cleaning latrines and worrying about landmines. Most artistic people in the American military will not get the opportunity these featured artists had, so I hope this work, though excellent, does not become a modern recruitment tool.