Bringing up the stew

Depicts two soldiers wearing tin helmets, carrying a covered pot of stew across a war damaged landscape during the First World War. The drawing was reproduced in the publication 'Australia at War: Drawings at the front' (London, 1918, p.15) with the following caption;'....The precious fluid, the hope giving potion, the stew from the wagon lines, the last evidence of the existence on earth of any civilisation or culture that the battalion will know for some days. It was to be a real stew with fresh meat, and in this case it was a triumph of the art, something to send the boys from supports into the line if not singing the merry songs of the imaginative press at least with some of the content of the gorged python...When the lookout saw the panting carriers coming over that greasy mixture of mud and water and desolation known as Flanders, they raised the equivalent of a cheer and hope again raised her drooping pennons. You have got to die- don't die hungry if you can help it. To have fluked a good meal before you go is to have cheated death to the extent of having bagged a good human satisfaction under his chargrined nose...'.

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.