Stretcher bearers near Butte de Warlencourt

Depicts two stretcher bearers in full uniform, wearing tin helmets, carrying a stretcher with a wounded man across a war damaged landscape. This work was reproduced in 'Australia at War: Drawings at the Front' (London, 1918) with the following caption; 'They move with their stretchers like boats on a slowly tossing sea, rising and falling with the shell riven contours of what was yesterday no man's land, slipping, sliding, with heels worn raw by the downward suck of the Somme mud...These men and all the men precipitated into the liquescent world of the line are not heroes from choice- they are heroes because someone has got to be heroic'. Will Dyson was the first Australian official war artist to visit the front during the First World War, travelling to France in December 1916, remaining there until May 1917, making records of the Australian involvement in the war. He was formally appointed as an official war artist, attached to the AIF, in May 1917, working in France and London throughout the war. His commission was terminated in March 1920.