On the march

Soldiers and a transport or artillery wagon move through a shell-pocked valley over-looked by a small village. Mervyn Napier Waller captured an Australian soldier's experience of the Western Front in a number of sensitively realised watercolour sketches. Without heroicism or theatricality, these works document the action that preceeded the historic retirement of the German forces from the Somme in 1917, and the part played therein by the Australian Artillery.