Artist at War

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

Originally published in 1956, this new edition of Artist at War contains
a foreword by historian Eric Harrison (Lieutenant Colonel, retired) and
37 of Captain Charles Comfort’s nearly 200 paintings of the World War
II Italian Peninsula Campaign.

Comfort was one of several professional artists employed by the
Canadian government to create a permanent historical record of Canadians
at war. The bulk of his work is currently owned by the Canadian War
Museum in Ottawa; a catalogue of his complete works, and notes about the
paintings reproduced in this volume, are included at the back of the
book.

An acclaimed artist before the war, Comfort also turned out to be a
first rate war diarist. His words are spiced with humor and compassion.
For example, he was often aware of how ridiculous his assignment
sometimes appeared to fighting soldiers: “They will be sending us
ballet dancers next,” comments one commanding officer. Although not an
actual combatant, Comfort was determined to get as close as possible to
the fighting—a desire that placed him in constant danger. The
retreating German army habitually left booby traps “to catch just such
unwary people as war artists,” he records. German artillery, snipers,
and fighter planes also ensured that Comfort never set up his easel
without first ensuring that a slit trench was within easy diving
distance.

In his foreword, Harrison remarks that although 100,000 Canadians
served in the Italian campaign, it remains largely a historical
backwater because of the more spectacular Allied invasions at Normandy
and in the Pacific. Captain Comfort’s book is, therefore, all the more
important, because it revives a much-neglected area of Canadian history.