| H. Avery Chenoweth, Sr.
Colonel USMCR (Ret.)
Artist,
writer, art & military historian
Announcer: Boeing presents
another in a series of essays from contemporary opinion leaders.
Today, artist, author, and retired Marine Reserve colonel,
Avery Chenoweth.
Colonel Chenoweth: When Saddam
Hussein invaded Kuwait back in 1990, I got a call from the
Marine Corps three days later asking if I wanted to go. “Go” meant
back on active duty and to Desert Shield.
I was sixty-two and had retired as a colonel
from the Marine Corps Reserve years earlier. Naturally my response
was, “I’ll be there in forty-eight hours in my
desert cammies.”
Incredibly, I did find myself six months later
in Desert Storm driving a camouflaged Jeep across Kuwait in
the middle of the First Marine Division, through the burning
oil fields—and right into Kuwait City .
My assignment? Combat artist. Right, Combat
artist.
Along with writing and photography, combat art
functions as a historical record for all the military services.
It’s done only by those participating in or observing
combat—not by “War illustrators” who make
up combat scenes in their studios.
The Marine Corps collection alone has some ten
thousand works of combat art.
Now I’d volunteered twice previously as
a combat artist in Vietnam , after having earned my baptism
in fire as a second lieutenant in Korea in 1951.
On active duty in combat, we Marine artists—and
there are only a few of us—are armed, we go with the
front line units, get shot at, and live just like other combat
Marines. We create quick sketches, take our own photos for
reference, and then do our paintings later.
The experience of war is like no other, and
an artist can best express visually not only what others see,
but what others feel. By capturing these moments from a personal
and artistic point of view, we often capture what cameras cannot.
Announcer: Boeing. Forever New Frontiers.
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