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Shared Experience: Battlefield burial of three NCOs

Art and War

 

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Collection Item C175976

Accession Number: ART22560

Ivor Hele
Battlefield burial of three NCOs

oil on canvas
76.3 x 91.6cm
 

In a 1983 interview, Hele recollected:

My most moving event in New Guinea was with the 2/3rd [commando] mob and three of their NCOs that were killed and stretched out. I started drawing and it started to drizzle with rain and a couple of the other blokes, digging in madly, stopped and propped up a couple of sticks and put round a sheet over the top of me.

 

The men were keen for him to record the incident.

 

Paintings

  • Bomber crew
    Stella Bowen
  • Battlefield burial of three NCOs
    Ivor Hele
  • Tragic Landscape
    Alex Colville
  • Japanese dead from suicide raid, Labuan
    Donald Friend
  • A Child Bomb-Victim Receiving Penecillin Treatment
    Ethel Gabain
  • Natives carrying wounded
    Sali Herman
  • A Saline Bath, RAF Hospital
    A.R. Thomson

Last updated: 23 June 2021

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