Archive for July, 2005

Sometimes there is no perfect solution; sometimes the only choice is to narrow your eyes and go hard. When Lieutenant G.M. Flowerdew crested the rise and saw two ranks of Germans arrayed across the open field, machine-guns ready, he knew the meaning of imperfect. But if he hesitated, seeing his doom, history didn’t record it. Flowerdew turned and shouted “It’s a charge, boys, it’s a charge,” then raised [...]

Alex Colville began his 60-year career as a war artist, and his lifetime of work has sustained his signature aloofness from those days. Understandable for a 24-year-old artist trying to survive the war and needing enough distance to keep from being completely overwhelmed. He was born in 1920 in Toronto, but spent most of his childhood in Nova Scotia and graduated from the Mount Allison University School of [...]

November 1917 saw the beginning of the turning point in the fortunes of World War I. The Russian Revolution earned Germany peace with the Bolsheviks, which freed up enough troops from the east to bolster their Western Front strength to 177 divisions. This seriously upset the balance between the German and Allied forces, who had been forced to divert 11 divisions to the Italian Front and were thinly spread with [...]