“The true picture of war is impossible to convey—even by those who did the bleeding and the fighting.”
So wrote Burton “Pat” Christenson at the start of a pictorial journal he made for his three sons after the war. The journal is the size of a large picture album and runs more than 50 pages. Inside are pictures drawn by Pat––exquisitely detailed pencil sketches of the war he lived through. Underneath each drawing is an excerpt from a journal he kept about his season of fighting in Europe. Sometimes the journal excerpts show straight descriptions of battle scenes; sometimes they are poems or analyses. The art flows from him in various forms as he’s ever seeking to communicate his experiences.
Pat’s art is graphic, vivid, not something you’d show to a six-year-old. One page shows a soldier clutching his hand over one eye. The soldier has just been hit by shrapnel. Blood gushes from his hand and spills over his face. The soldier’s other eye is still open, shocked, looking straight ahead. “Only those who were wounded severely know the conflicting emotions and anxieties that race through a person’s brain,” wrote Pat underneath, “if one is still conscious after being hit.”
