Hyperbole, Sarcasm and Fatalism: Canadian Humour in the Italian Campaign 1943-45

Stephen Leacock wrote in Humour and Humanity that humour approaches indifference or cruelty, but is softened by its link to pathos in its compassion and pity.  This union, he claimed, was what prevented humour from "breaking into guffaws" in callous mockery, or "subsiding into sobs", in commiseration. (Gerald Lynch, Stephen Leacock: Humour and Humanity McGill Queens: 1988.) Both the anger and the sadness of humour is found in the censored letters of Canadian soldiers in the Italian campaign.  Men on campaign wrote home with exaggerated criticism of army policy, and told stories of their fellow soldiers' humour relieving the most pitiable circumstances.  Both the cruelty and the sorrow of war lies sublimated below the rough surface of their sarcastic and often biting humour.

Tim Cook gave a lecture at Trent in 2009 on Soldiers' Humour.

Tim Cook recently published an interesting article on humour in the Canadian Expeditionary Force during the First World War, arguing that humour was a way to release tension and survive the horrific conditions and experiences on the Western Front.  The article, "'I will meet the world with a smile and a Joke': Canadian Soldiers Humour in the Great War" in Canadian Military History, (Spring 2013) argues that while the lasting memory of the First World War, constructed by poets such as Siegfried Sassoon and perpetuated in print and on film ever since, has been that of pointless carnage and suffering, that soldiers' writings provide an important adjunct to this somber tone.  Cook writes that soldiers' humour was by no means uniform, but that themes can be drawn from the wide corpus of personal testimony including: justification of the killing process; masculine teasing; gallows humour which hoped to "trivialize the terrifying"; mockery of the heroic and patriotic rhetoric of the war; masculine teasing; and plain bawdy lewdness and silliness.

In Italy, attempts to relieve the stress of battle are clear in an account of the crossing of the Moro River.  In December 1943, a member of the 3rd Field Company of Royal Canadian Engineers wrote at length of the sappers under his command who made light of his attempts to sooth their concerns at being under fire while bridging the river on the outskirts of Ortona:

We have been having a ding-dong, knock-em-out-drag-em out battle with Jerry the last little while and are still advancing so I guess we are better than he is at this war game. All the advantage is on his side. Hills and rivers forming natural obstacles for him to defend and we to overcome. We had quite a job about a week ago getting over a river but did get over it amid much praise from General Montgomery down. I was explaining to the boys that getting to the job was the worst part and on the job we would be as safe as in a church. A sapper pipes up and wants to know if I have any particular church in mind, quite humorous under the conditions. When we got to the job we came under machine gun fire and again the great fatalist tried to explain that if one had your number on it you got it, if not you would not. A sapper said he wasn't ascaird of the one with a number on it, it was the one addressed 'To whom it may concern' which worried him. Humor comes out in the strangest places. (Library and Archives Canada, RG24 Vol. 10,705)

Poppy on the Moro Approaches.  2009 Gregg Centre Battlefield Tour. Copyright Will Pratt.

Using humour to relieve stress and misery is particularly apt in front-line conditions.  As one soldier from 3rd Field Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery wrote in April 1944, “There may be lots of mud and rain and the unpleasant thoughts of what we are engaged in but there is always humour. Men are irrepressible – there is always the brighter side for the picture.” (RG24 Volume 12323)

As men found more problems with administrative policies later in the campaign, the humour in censorship excerpts was increasingly of the sarcastic variety.  Men frequently complained about lack of leave back to Canada.  The Zombies (the nickname for National Resources Mobilization Act conscripts who were for the time still allowed to serve in Canada) were continually criticized.  One trooper's comment suggests that suspicions and jealousy lay close below the surface. He sarcastically wrote in August 1944,

How are those Zombies doing back in Canada? They must really have a tough battle over there. Trying to keep away from beer parlours or keeping form having too delightful a time. Or keeping a fighting man's wife company. (RG24 Volume 12,323)

Jealous worry about women on the homefront is a major theme in soldiers letters, and has been identified as prevalent in the Eighth Army in earlier postal censorship by Jonathan Fennel in his work Combat and Morale in the North African Campaign (2010).

Something funny was definitely going on here.  

Troopers of the Governor General's Horse Guards displaying distinctive haircuts before the advance on the Hitler Line, Italy, 26 May 1944. Credit: Lieut. Strathy E.E. Smith / Canada. Dept. of National Defence / Library and Archives Canada / PA-189923

Cook noted that First World War soldiers used humour to raise grievances, and the tradition continued for the next generation of Canadian soldiers.  In Italy, the policy of putting towns out of bounds to Canadians after the Battle of the Hitler Line as an attempt to reduce venereal disease rates was a notable hit on troop morale.  Again in August, as the I Canadian Corps prepared to breach the Gothic Line, signs bearing "Out of Bounds to Canadian Troops", came under sarcastic criticism.  A private wrote home,

Every damn place is out of bounds to the Canadians. It is getting beyond a joke now. Most of the boys are wondering if Canada will be 'Out of bounds.' I guess the only place they can trust them is at the front. (RG24, Vol. 12,323)

Private W. Sutherland (left) of The Westminster Regiment (Motor) 

and Private V.A. Keddy of The Cape Breton Highlanders

 repacking compo rations at a supply depot, Cassino, Italy, 18 April 1944.

Credit: Lieut. Strathy E.E. Smith / Canada. Dept. of National Defence 

/ Library and Archives Canada / PA-151177 

The old saw that the army marches on its stomach seems to be as true for the General ELM Burns' troops as it was for Napoleon's.  Those in the Chief Censor's office got in on the joke by labelling some grousing about the tinned rations of Meat and Vegetables the "Gourmet's Resolve".  A private soldier wrote, “I'm still on that balanced diet of M. & V. I'll get even with Argentina someday.” (RG24 Vol 12,323)

The connection with the homefront and longing to return there was observed in many letters as a second winter in Italy began.  By the end of 1944, the lack of home leave was criticized by many soldiers.  A new points scheme had been put in place, but many correctly assumed they wouldn't see Canada until after the war.  One gunner wrote home using a little hyperbole about his expected leave date:

Guess the papers have quite a write-up about the '39 boys coming home for Christmas leaves. At the rate they are going about it, I'll likely be home about 1960. We have sent two men out of about 500. (RG24 Vol. 12,323)

Maple Leaf, 24 January 1945.

While criticism of officers and superiors was not a general feature of Canadian mail, in 1945 the visit of John Bracken, the Progressive Conservative leader of the opposition, came in for griping against politicians who visited the front and later spoke in the press on behalf of soldiers.  As the censorship report for early February wrote, Bracken need not have taken these grouses personally as comments were “characterized by a certain impatience with politicians as a class.”  Lamenting the long campaign in Italy, a private wrote,“Bracken is here in Italy – the opposition chief. I wonder if he comes to bring us our Italian naturalization papers.” (February 1945)  Another private's note home bordered on mania.

I won't be qualified to come home for another six months or so as the powers that be have decided that the Cdns are the toughest solider on earth and as a result they can stand five years overseas when Br. Forces only stay three and a half, N.Z.'s three years and American 18 mos. Yeah, we're tough and we love it. Yeah!!! (February, 1945)

The marriage between pathos and cruelty that Leacock identified as the essence of humour certainly existed in Canadian letters from the the Italian front.  Men joked their fear away, and used sarcasm to complain of policies that restricted them.  The strain of humour that Cook identified as mocking the patriotic or heroic discourse of the war is related to the complaints against leave policies that kept soldiers in Italy.  Considering that longing to return home was a major theme of wartime letters, and that unlike trench newspapers, the audience for these writings was friends and family at home, the sublimation of homesickness with a wry joke at the Army's expense comes as no surprise.

Mediterranean Musings: 5th Canadian Armoured Division Medical Humour

Amidst the quarterly medical returns and operational message logs in the 5th Canadian Armoured Division's medical services war diary, a comic account of the Italian campaign awaits those studying medical aspects of the Canadian Army during the Second World War.  Captain Brian Murphy's "Mediterranean Musings" is a witty reminiscence of his experiences with the No. 13 Canadian Field Dressing Station which acts as a tonic to the otherwise deathly serious account of daily medical operations.

The bulk of the war diary of 5th Canadian Armoured Division's Assistant Director Medical Services is what one would expect from a medical headquarters in the Italian Campaign.  The documents deal mainly with the operations of the field ambulances under its command, and the evacuation and treatment of casualties.  A number of interesting modifications to jeeps and carriers were made to accommodate stretchers to take the wounded from the battlefield, but in no quarter did battle casualties exceed sickness.  Major drains on manpower included infective hepatitis (jaundice), influenza, and venereal disease.  Captain Murphy's "Musings", however, were no treatise on epidemiology, nor a statistical rending of gonorrhea and syphilis rates in the Division.  Instead, Murphy opted for a humorous review of his campaign with the medicals.

Writing from the North-West Europe campaign, in the summer of 1945, Murphy started with a complaint to his editor which devolved into a description of a local Dutch elixir, which had the ability to raise the spirits of those awaiting repatriation.  The "Musings" begin,

Dear Ed;

You said I was becoming morose; you said let's have something gay for a change; and cut it down to a thousand words; you said gaiety is the spice of life and brevity is its container...Please don't ask me to be gay.  But then gaiety can be acquired artificially, so gather round and allow me to pour you a drink of Moose Milk...an old Dutch remedy for rheumatics contracted whilst awaiting transport to Canada.  Incidently the above-mentioned 'Lait de Moose' consists of gin, milk and eggs in proportions depending on whether you wish to stay in your billet and play 'Button, button, who'se got the button', or desire to sally forth and destroy single-handed a town, say of 20,000 inhabitants.  A list of such towns can be obtained by writing to the Moose Milk Dairies.  Only one town allotted per customer.

After this strange aside on the benefits of the local egg nog, Murphy cuts to the chase, but continues charting his alcoholic course, recalling the that the trip to the Italian theatre, code-named Operation TIMBERWOLF, was far from dry.

In September '43, we boarded the Cap Paradan a ship that was decidedly wet, outside and in.  I have never travelled with so many lawyers, everybody seemed to be called to the bar.  Cases weren't defended.  They were opened.  The juries were vicious, they kept yelling "Let's Kill It."

"Finito Signor???", Bing Coughlin, Herbie!, (Nelson: 1946).

After three weeks at sea, the troop transports arrived in Phillippville and the division then started the tedious train trip to Bizerta, which Murphy suggested was an excellent way to develop battle exhaustion symptoms.  The train travelled at 15 miles per hour, and Murphy noted sarcastically that this was, "fast I admit, but this is the modern age." A fire broke out on one of the train cars which set off small arms ammunition and in the insuing chaos locals began looting the train.  Murphy recalled, "a few natives had decided they were in dire need of blankets and boots, and more small arms ammo went off, only this time it was aimed in the general direction of the said culprits."

Once the 5th Division was in Italy, Murphy recalls several interesting tales about interactions between medical officers and Italian civilians.  When it became known that Canadian doctors diagnosed civilians, the line ups resembled those at London fish and chip stands.  Eggs were the usual payments for treatments, which usually involved assuring patients that they could not expect imminent death.  Murphy wrote, "At this realization, Guiseppe's or Maria's face would light up and with shrugging shoulders and clasped hands they would exclaim 'Grazie, grazie Dottore Canadesi buona' (translation: Gracious thanks, as a physician you are not bad.)" Murphy noted if patients were "very impressed by roadside manner", they might welcome the medical officer into their home for a spaghetti meal.   Returning to a familiar theme, he wrote, 

the spaghetti is not good food to get stiff on.  But with said filaments of flour and water, is served wine, of which the Canucks were very fond. Italy was no place for a chap with alcohic [sic] tendencies, water was just a place to wash clothes in.

"Think I'll Have M'Lunch.  Who's got a cork-screw?"
, Bing Coughlin, Herbie!, (Nelson: 1946).

Murphy's account continues to spin humorous yarns of housecalls to remove worms from Italian children, and intimacies in crowded rooms during air raids.  He even coins a term for a new affliction called "airmenorrhea", in which young Italian women mysteriously stop menstruating for months after spending an hour or two in close confines sheltered from bombers.

After a long campaign in Italy, suffering through two wet winters in the mud and snow, it comes as no suprise that Murphy was pleased to leave the theatre.  In closing his account, he wrote, "Christmas came late last year.  In fact it didn't happen until we sailed away from the land of the mud, mountains, mosquitoes and mines...and that was in February."

Captain Brian Murphy's account is found in the June 1945 War Diary of 5th Canadian Armoured Division's ADMS HQ, Library and Archives Canada, Record Group 24, Vol. 15,664.

Brutalized Landscapes: Wayne Larsen on AY Jackson and the Great War (2/2)

Continued from previous post.

Wayne Larsen's A.Y. Young (Toronto: Dundurn, 2009) is a biography of a Canadian war artist who experienced the Great War as a private in the ranks before being picked up by the Canadian War Memorials Fund.  His work for Lord Beaverbrook's organization produced some of the most iconic depictions of battlescapes on record.  After Second Ypres, Jackson accepted the war would not be over quickly, and enlisted in the 60th Battalion.

That A.Y. Jackson was on the cusp of renown when he joined the army, is reflected in the reportage of the Montreal Gazetteof June 29th, 1915.

(W.W.I - 1914 - 1918) Lieut.-Col. Gascoigne,
 O.C. 60th Battalion. May, 1917. 

Canada. Dept. of National Defence
/Library and Archives Canada/

When the first five hundred men of the 60th Battalion, under Lieut.Col. F.A. Gascoigne, entrain at the Windsor street station tomorrow night for Valcartier, the force will have on its strength Private A.Y. Jackson, artist, and associate of the Royal Canadian Academy...Mr. Jackson a few years ago traveled through Belgium, sketched its landscapes and its historic monuments, and in that time of peace and prosperity saw the cities that have since been devastated by the Germans - Bruges, Brussels, Antwerp, Liege and Namur. Now he is anxious to battle on that soil in the common cause." (Quoted in Larsen, p. 72)

Jackson arrived in Le Havre, France in February 1916, and would see four months of action before being wounded. Fifteen years after the fact, he recalled a surreal day in the trenches:

I was just thinking back to another June 3rd crawling along a trench in Sanctuary Wood, and an aeroplane circling overhead like a big hawk, signalling to the artillery who were trying to blow us up. It was a day of glorious sunshine and only man was vile, in general, individually they were magnificent. I thought a cup of cocoa in a dressing station was an undreamed of luxury. (Quoted in Larsen, p. 73) 

A little over a week later, Jackson was wounded in the Battle of Mount Sorrel. After his recovery, when training at Shoreham, England, in the summer of 1917, he received the news that Tom Thomson had drowned.  The event was shrouded in mystery, and has since been the subject of much historical speculation.

It was in the summer of 1917 that Jackson's fortunes as a common soldier changed. While digging a latrine in Shoreham, he was approached by a member of the Canadian War Memorials Fund, who told Jackson of the opportunity to work for Lord Beaverbrook as an official painter. After he proved that he had the skills for the job, he was promoted to Lieutenant, which was a source of some embarrassment. As Larsen wrote, "Whereas Private Jackson had avoided saluting officers by taking alternate routes down quiet side streets, Lieutenant Jackson now had to keep to the busy main roads to avoid being saluted." (Larsen, p. 80)

AY Jackson. Gas Attack, Lievin. 1918. Beaverbrook Collection of War Art, Canadian War Museum. 19710261-0179

Later that year, when he made his way to Flanders, he again felt embarrassed traveling around in a staff car, while the poor bloody infantry slogged on through the endless muck. Soldiers were generally cold to him until they learned that he had been wounded in combat. Larsen suggests that something in the changed nature of warfare, the estrangement of artillery, chlorine gas, night attacks, and tunnels, meant that old depictions of battle no longer sufficed. Jackson's memory supports this: 

When the War Records of World War I were organized, the artists started off thinking in terms of the kind of war art popularized by the Graphic and the Illustrated London News. It gave one the feeling of something left over from previous wars, the old stock poses, the same old debris lying around like still life, and smoke drifting whenever the composition gave trouble.

The machine gun had destroyed the old death and glory picture which depended on a mass of cavalry or infantry hurtling forward with the shot-riddled flag clutched in the striken hero's hand. There pictures were mostly painted by artists who had no first-hand information and it was not long before we realized how ineffective they were. (Cited in Larsen, p. 81)

Portrait of t Robert Shankland, 
The Victoria Cross, 1917.
 Canadian War Museum. 
Beaverbrook Collection of
 War Art Photo Credit 

While Jackson did paint a portrait of Victoria Cross recipient, most of his work, the largest of any war artist, were depictions of landscapes decimated by battle. "He knew that by painting what would have otherwise been peaceful landscapes, now battered beyond recognition by the modern war machine, he could instil in the viewer a sense of devastation that could be measured in human terms." (Larsen, p. 81).

A Copse Evening. AY Jackson, 1918.

The winter of 1917-18 was spent in his London studio, and it was on his return to the battlefields in the spring of 1918 when he painted A Copse, Evening, one of his best known works of the war. The German spring offensive pushed the artists off the continent, and curiously, Jackson did not return to capture Canadian advances during the Hundred Days campaign. Jackson was instead ordered back to Canada to prepare to join Canadian troops to Siberia.

It is here that Larsen leaves the reader wanting more.  Why did Jackson go back to Canada at this time instead of heading back to the front as the British pressed forward in 1918?  The Canadian Siberian Expeditionary force, was sent to aid the White Russians against their revolutionary foe, in hopes to allow Russia to fight the Germans in the east. The expedition sailed in October of 1918, yet Larsen notes that on the 11th of November, Jackson was on Sainte-Catherine Street, Montreal when he heard the church bells ringing to announce the end of the war. So when Larsen writes, "of course the trip to Siberia was automatically cancelled", part of the story is missing. (Larsen, p. 86)

Personnel of the Canadian Siberian Expeditionary Force

 with truck Date(s)ca. Jan. - May 1919PlaceVladivostok, Russia. 

Credit: Raymond Gibson / Library and Archives Canada / C-091749

Troops were still sent to Siberia in December 1918, in fact, some of them mutinied in Victoria before sailing. Was the action no longer considered part of the First World War and thus no longer justified commemoration under the Canadian War Memorials Fund? Was no other artist available to go with the expedition other than Jackson? London to Vladivostok is a long journey, was no one closer that could have done the job?

Larsen can't answer every question about Jackson's motivations and attitudes towards the war, especially in a full length biography of which 1914-1918 is but one small component.  He does relay an amusing anecdote about Jackson and the Siberian Intervention. He notes that in preparation for the trip, Jackson purchased twenty tubes of white paint so that he would have enough to capture all the snow. With his trip cancelled, he had more white paint than he would need for years. He joked that it was this stash of white paint that prompted him to become a painter of snowy landscapes in the following years, "as I had to find some use for it." (Larsen, p. 86)

A.Y. Jackson’s In Jasper Park, 1924. A Y Jackson's painting In Jasper Park. Thomson Collection at The Art Gallery of Ontario Photo Courtesy of the Estate of the late Dr. Naomi Jackson Groves Westbridge Fine Art

In the years following the First World War, Jackson painted troopships in Halifax before being officially discharged. He would soon become affiliated with the Group of Seven, working to promote a distinct Canadian way of art.  Some argue that the war altered his style to shift from early-modernist impressionist styles to more post-impressionist expressions of landscapes.  Some of Jackson's work is available for viewing at the Glenbow Museum's Transformations exhibit, which examines the development of Jackson's nationalism and its relation to the Great War.

Distant Trumpets: Wayne Larsen on AY Jackson and the approach of the Great War (1/2)

Wayne Larsen's A.Y. Jackson: The Life of a Landscape Painter(Toronto: Dundurn, 2009), is a handsome book which offers a biography of one of Canada's most renowned artists, illustrated richly by the painter's works. It provides an excellent primer to an ongoing exhibitionat the Glenbow Museum (Calgary) featuring Jackson's work alongside the landscapes of Otto Dix, and emphasizing the various conceptions of nationalism affected by the Great War.  Jackson is a quintessentially Canadian painter, but Larsen makes it clear that the future Group of Seven member, was indebted to European impressionists in his pre-war works.

Larsen argues that Jackson's most important role was that of promoter of Canadian art, and his post-war resolve to continue to support the Group of Seven's desires to form a dynamic national style. Larsen notes that it was the core Group of Seven members' discovery of Jackson's The Edge of the Maple Wood in a 1911 exhibition in Toronto, which connected the artist to these influential painters. This was the first time that Jackson applied his Parisian training to Quebec subjects, depicting a sunny day in the Eastern Townships. (Larsen, p. 5-7)
 

The Edge of the Maple Wood (1910) A.Y. Jackson Canadian, 1882 - 1974 oil on canvas
54.6 x 65.4 cm Purchased 1937 National Gallery of Canada (no. 4298)
Courtesy of the Estate of the late Dr. Naomi Jackson Groves

Sweetsburg, Quebec (1910)
 Courtesy of the Estate of the late Dr. Naomi Jackson Groves
54 x 64.1 cmoil on canvasBequest of Dr. J.M. MacCallum,
 Toronto, 1944National Gallery of Canada (no. 4730)

Jackson had traveled to France and had studied at the Academie Julian in September 1907, but  art dealers and collectors were little impressed by Jackson's works upon his return. As he would later write, it was European art which was in demand: "Dutch pictures became a symbol of social position and wealth...The houses bulged with cows, old women peeling potatoes, and windmills." (Cited in Larsen, p. 33). Another work which applied impressionist style to Canadian subjects was Sweetsburg, Quebec(1910). The depiction of mud in front of a dilapidated barn suggests that decaying, barren, and muddy landscapes were a part of Jackson's work before the Great War.

Autumn in PicardyA.Y. Jackson1912

Courtesy of the Estate of the late Dr. Naomi Jackson Groves
21.2 x 27 cm oil on wood
Gift of members of the Arts & Letters Club, Toronto, 1914
National Gallery of Canada (no. 6529r)

By 1913, after a further sojourn to Europe, Jackson had taken the plunge and moved to Toronto, where he was championed by Lawren Harris and and JEH MacDonald. As the inheritor to the Massey-Harris farm implements fortune, Harris had the time, energy, and money to commit himself to art, which he did with great zeal. In 1913, Harris was in the process of building a major new studio space to foster Canadian artists, scheming to introduce Jackson's works to the National Gallery. Without asking the Gallery whether it would like Jackson's work, Harris pooled money from members of the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto to give Jackson's Autumn in Picardyto the Gallery. He then proceeded to advertise the fact to the press, putting National Gallery director Eric Brown in a difficult position. While the stunt finally came off, it was hardly necessary, as the Gallery had already accepted Jackson's The Drive as well as Sand Dunes at Cucq.

The pre-war years were a time that Jackson began to gain some notoriety for applying Impressionist techniques to Canadian landscapes, yet he still had his traditionalist academic detractors. It was at this time that Toronto Star critic HF Gadsby coined the term "The Hot Mush School", in reference to these new artists, noting "all their pictures look pretty much alike, the net result being more like a gargle or gob of porridge than a work of art." (Larsen, p. 57-61).

Tom Thomson Algonquin Lake, 1914.
Credit: Franklin Carmichael
/ Library and Archives Canada / e007914169

In 1914, Jackson was in the Rocky Mountains, on a commission by Canadian National Railways to paint the mountains for hotel lobbies. Very few of these paintings would survive, as Jackson threw many of them into the fire when he learned that the company went bankrupt. Jackson was his own sharpest critic, and destroyed many of his own paintings over the years.  One day when he returned from hiking the mountains to a small mountain construction camp, he learned that Canada was a war. (Larsen, p. 66-67) Jackson did not rush home to join a regiment, however, instead heading to Alqonquin Park to join Tom Thomson.


Larsen suggests that Jackson did not sign up in the Canadian services believing, like many, that the war would end very quickly. (Larsen, p.69) It was the Spring of 1915, when the painter learned of the Canadians being gassed at the Second Battle of Ypres, that he realized the grave nature of the conflict. He wrote, "At the railway station one morning I heard the first news of the Battle of Saint-Julien. I knew then that all the wishful thinking about the war being of short duration was over." (Cited in Larsen, p. 71)

In addition to Larsen's book, the National Gallery of Canada has a large range of Jackson's paintings online, for those wishing to examine his earlier works.  Many of his sketches from his time in Paris exist, and a sense of his early European influences are clear.  Soon after the shock of Second Ypres, the landscape painter would cross the Atlantic himself, and was wounded on service before finding his role as Canadian war artist and promoter of a national school of art.

For more on Jackson and the Great War, see the following post.

Alexander Young Jackson, the Group of Seven, and the First World War

Many historians have claimed that the First World War was a transformative period, ushering in a new modern era of bureaucracy and state control. For Canadian historians, the dominant narrative surrounding the war, has been that of colony to nation. In art history, this nationalist tone rings true as well, for it was during the Great War that key nationalist artists who would later become known as the Group of Seven developed their skills and were broadly publicized through patriotic efforts linked to the conflict.

Group of Seven, 1920. From left to right: Frederick Varley, A. Y. Jackson, Lawren Harris, Fairley, Frank Johnston, Arthur Lismer, and J. E. H. MacDonald. It was taken at The Arts and Letters Club of Toronto. Photo: Arthur Goss.

Four future Group of Seven artists were officially commissioned by the Canadian War Memorials Fund to depict the war. On the homefront, Arthur Lismer and Frank Johnston depicted Canadian efforts, and overseas, AY Jackson and Frederick Varley captured the battlefields of Europe. Unofficially, a fifth member, JEH MacDonald, lent his hand to the war effort by producing illustrations for honour rolls, posters, and other patriotic impressions.

The Group of Seven are the quintessential Canadian visual artists, known for depicting a stark Canadian wilderness which some argue bears the mark of military experience. As Colleen Sharpe, (curator of a previous exhibition at Calgary's Military Museums on the emergent Group of Seven and war), wrote in 2009, "The iconic features of the Group of Seven's art - disturbed ground, prominent rocks, muddy colours and skeletal tree trunks - have not been widely acknowledged as originating in the landscape of the First World War, yet it seems no accident of chronology that these men painted many of their seminal art works directly following the war."(Colleen Sharpe, "Artists and Soldiers", in Art in the Service of War: The Emergent Group of Seven (2009), p. 3) Maria Tippett also saw a direct military connection in the formation of the Group's style, writing that "The low-keyed colours of no man's land and the trenches - muddy brown, yellow ochre, and cool grey - came to permeate the post-war canvases of Varley, Jackson, and others who had lived and painted at the front." (Maria Tippett, Art at the Service of War: Canada, Art, and the Great War (Toronto, 1984), p. 108)  She also notes that exposure to British modernists during their time in England, was a wartime connection that would bring change to Canadian art.

The Canadian War Memorials Fund was the organization which did the most to support Canadian war art during the First World War. Headed by Lord Beaverbrook, the Fund commissioned artists to create a permanent artistic record of the conflict. It prioritized the documentary aspects of art, giving artists the opportunity to explore the battlefields and sketch what they observed. The Fund supported British artists as well, but historians have argued that its major contribution was the support of artists, and the organization of critics and gallery executives, "which enabled a national school of art to fluorish." (Maria Tippett, Art at the Service of War: Canada, Art, and the Great War (Toronto, 1984), p.6.) From November 1916, the CWMF gave artists full-time officer's rank and wages to memorialize the war.

The Great War occurred at a time when artistic taste was changing. As Jackson himself wrote, the war would let Canadian art "emerge from all its tribulations. Its worst foe materialism is being walloped, and will never be quite so formidable again. And all the academic bunch are dying off, gradually very gradually ... the future will take care of us."(Tippett, p. 7) For Jackson, more traditional means of portraying battle no longer rang true. As he put it, depictions of clashes of arms, with crisp lines, and vibrant colours had, "gone underground. There was little to see. The old heroics, the death and glory stuff, were obsolete." (Tippett, p. 13)

House of Ypres
Painted by Alexander Young Jackson
Beaverbrook Collection of War Art
CWM 19710261-0189

Private A.Y. Jackson c.1915
60th Battalion, enlisted June 1915
McMichael Canadian Art Collection Archives

AY Jackon created one of the largest bodies of work of any battlefield war artist, and had served in the 60th Battalion before being committed full time as an artist. He would write that "Lawren Harris wanted me to apply for a commission and offered to defray all expenses in connection with it, but I knew nothing about soldiering and decided to start at the bottom as a private in the infantry." (Art in the Service of War, p. 4) During his time in the line, Jackson put his artistic skills to military use, by drawing diagrams and details from military maps. (Tippett, p.12) Jackson was wounded at Maple Copse near Ypres, which fortunately kept him out of the fighting in Passchendaele. The artist was no stranger to France, having spent some time studying there a decade previous to the war.

Jackson spent time convalescing in France before being sent back to England. He was taken on strength of a reserve battalion and in Shoreham Camp when he heard about the CWMF and decided to approach Lord Beaverbrook. The environment in the battalion contributed to this decision. Jackson noted there was "not enough food and too many military police" with disgruntled soldiers being "drilled and disciplined by men who had not been in France". (Tippett, p. 14) Shortly after he left the battalion a mutiny broke out in the unit.

It was the battlefield itself that inspired; the alien mudscapes, and shattered woods.  Maria Tippett wrote that, "Nothing came to symbolize the war for the artist and the combatant as much as the land upon which it was fought....Pock-marked with gaping water-filled craters, strewn with bones, metal, and all the refuse of modern warfare, the topography of the front line offered few familiar associations....The machine had superseded God's handiwork; his landscape was being reshaped by man's instruments." (Tippett, p. 58) Tippett notes that it was this violent new meaning and manifestation of the landscape that made Romantic-Realist conventions seemingly out of place. Jackson felt that his style needed to be adjusted as well: "the impressionist technique I had adopted in painting was now ineffective, visual impressions were not enough." (Tippett, p.59)

A Copse, Evening
Painted by Alexander Young Jackson
Beaverbrook Collection of War Art

These landscapes and the new techniques used to portray them were directly influential in the development of a national school of art for Canadians after the war. As Tippett writes, "After the war Jackson and his fellow artists deliberately sought to paint 'swampy, rocky, wolf-ridden, burnt and scuttled country with rivers and lakes scattered all through it.' The Group of Seven's concern to demonstrate...the 'spirit' of painting in Canada, was thus associated with a sense that this could best be done by employing methods and techniques they and their colleagues had either seen used or themselves employed to paint the war-torn landscape of the Old World." (Tippett, p. 109)

The Glenbow museum of Calgary is currently exhibiting the work of AY Jackson and Otto Dix, drawing comparisons around the idea of nation and the influence of the Great War on their art.