AUSTRALIA AT WAR - 20 Illustrations about soldiers lives at the Somme and Ypres: 20 Illustrations from the Great War

By Will Dyson

Herein are 20 illustrations made during the winters at Ypres and on the Somme by Will Dyson, even though he was wounded in their making. Dyson (1880 – 1938)  the official illustrator for the Australian Imperial Force (AIF). They reflect the misery and the depression of the material conditions of these campaigns than it does any of the soldiers exaltations or the typical cheerfulness which accompanied the Anzacs.
It is always difficult for a creative person, like an artist, to remain positive when faced with the horrors of war, but especially the horrors that WWI, the first modern war, brought. However, it is the soul rather than the body that he has drawn here, drawn out in long fantastic lines. In any case the lightest, wildest or even crudest sketch scratched down by Dyson has always had more of the true grip of gravity than the whole of the Royal Academy.
Indeed there is something significant in all that white light and sharp shadow which belongs to such dramatic scenes, and is so favourable to the art of black and white. There is even something of allegory in that awful and empty daylight in which armies live, so often without a stick of roof or a rag of curtain. All the soldiers in a great war are historical characters; but these are rather specially standing, not against court or camp, but only against the sky. They are under a light which will indeed prove eternal; even as compared with other historic groups their contribution has been written into the annals of history and will continue to be known forevermore.
10% of the net sale will be donated to charities by the publisher.
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KEYWORDS/TAGS: Australia at War, Will Dyson, World War One, World War 1, World War I, WWI, WW1, official, illustrations, Australian Imperial Force, AIF, twenty, 20, Australian, ANZAC, New Zealand, Kiwi, Okker, Aussie, Bringing Up The Stew, Report,  Battery, Dead Beat, The Cook, Group, Looking For, Battalion, Mate, Tunnellers, Under, German Territory, Coming Out, The Somme, Ypres, Battle of, Labour Battalion Man, Back, Waggon Lines, Polygon Wood, Delville Wood, Lightly Wounded, Menin Road, Dressing Station, Stretcher-Bearers, Martinpuich, Peronne, Waiting For The Stew, food, hot, In The Tunnel, Hill 60, Fatalist, Outside, Pill Box, Hanging About, Down, The Ridge, France, Flanders, fields, Pas-de-Calais, Hauts-de-France

• Language: English
• Publisher: Abela Publishing
• Release date: May 23, 2018
• ISBN: 9788828327462

Book preview

Australia at War

A Winter Record of 20 Illustrations

Made By

Will Dyson

(Official AIF Artist)

On The Somme And At Ypres

During The Campaigns Of 1916 And 1917

With An Introduction By

G. K. Chesterton

Originally Printed By

Cecil Palmer & Hayward, London

[1918]

Resurrected by

Abela Publishing, London

[2018]

Australia At War

Typographical arrangement of this edition

© Abela Publishing 2018

This book may not be reproduced in its current format in any manner in any media, or transmitted by any means whatsoever, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, or mechanical ( including photocopy, file or video recording, internet web sites, blogs, wikis, or any other information storage and retrieval system) except as permitted by law without the prior written permission

of the publisher.

Abela Publishing,

London

United Kingdom

ISBN-: 978-X-XXXXXX-XX-X

email:

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Abela Publishing

Dedication

TO THE MEN OF THE A.I.F.

To you who tread that dire itinerary

Who go like pedlars down the routes of Death,

Grey in its bloody traffic, but who gaze

Inured upon its scarlet merchandise

With eyes too young to have yet wholly shed

The pity moving roundness of the child—

To you, like cave men rough-hewn of the mud,

Housed in a world made primal mud again,

With terrors of that legendary past,

Reborn to iron palpability,

Roaring upon the earth with every wind—

To you who go to do the work of wolves

Burdened like mules, and bandying with Death—

To hide the silent places of the soul—

The ribald jests that half convince the blind

It does not wholly anguish you to die—

To you who through those days upon the Somme,

About you still the odours of our bush,

I saw come down, with eyes like tired mares,

Along the jamming traffic of Mametz,

Creeping each man, detached among his kind,

Along a separate Hell of memory—

To you, and you, I dedicate these things

That have no merit save that they, for you,

Were woven with what truth there was in me

Where you went up, with Death athwart the wind

Poised like a hawk a-strike—to save the world,

Or else to succour poor old bloody Bill

Beleaguered in a shell hole on the ridge.

W. D.

Artist’s Note.

This selection of drawings, made