Shared Experience: Leslie Cole (1910–1977)
Art and War
Cole trained as a mural decorator and fabric painter. He was a salaried war artist with an honorary commission as a captain in the RM. He travelled widely, recording the aftermath of the war in Malta, France, Greece, Germany and the Far East. He did not return to Britain until the spring of 1946, having witnessed the horrors of Belsen concentration camp and Japanese prisoner-of-war camps in Singapore.