Kerr Eby's Sketches of "Marines in Action"

Kerr Eby was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1889, the son of Methodist missionaries. The family returned to their native Canada in 1893, where he lived until his high school graduation. He then moved to New York City to study art. In World War I he served as a sergeant with the 40th engineers in France, and his sketches of scenes at Belleau Wood, Chateau- Thierry, Saint-Mihiel, and the Meuse-Argonne later formed the basis for his famous book War, published by Yale University Press in 1936.

In World War II he was accredited as a war artist- correspondent for Abbott Laboratories in 1943 and accompanied the Marines when they landed at Tarawa. During the next four months he became a familiar figure wherever the fighting was hardest in the South Pacific. While there, he contracted a tropical disease which weakened his health. He returned to the United States unable to resume his very active career. He died in 1946.

The following sketches are from the Naval History And Heritage Command website. Please visit them for more great works of artists from WW2 and many other times and areas of conflict.