Tom Lea’s Paintings
Life Magazine artist Tom Lea accompanied Marines on Peleliu.
Tom Lea, the artist of the paintings which illustrate this pamphlet, wrote of his experiences on Peleliu in Battle Stations, published in 1988 by Still Point Press in Dallas. Some of the sketches from this book were reproduced with commentary in Volume 14, Number 2 of Discovery, a journal published by the University of Texas at Austin. In this issue, James Jones, author of From Here to Eternity, wrote: “Lea was one of the artists put in the field by Life.... Various of his works appeared in the magazine, and up until the time he went into Peleliu, most of them could be pretty well classified as excellently done but high-grade propaganda. There was very little American blood, very little tension, very little horror. Mostly, it was what could be called the Bravo America! and This is Your Boy type of war art. His almost photographic style easily lent itself to that type of work....
“But something apparently happened to Lea after going into Peleliu. The pictures painted out of his Peleliu experience show a new approach. There is the tension of terror in the bodies here, the distorted facial expressions of the men under fire show it, too....
“One of the most famous, of course, is the Two-Thousand-Yard Stare portrait of a young marine who has had all, or more than, he can take. The staring eyes, the slack lips, the sleepwalker’s stance. I’ve seen men with that look on their faces. I’ve had it on my own face. It feels stiff, and the muscles don’t want to work right when you try to smile, or show expression, or talk. Mercifully, you’re out of it for a while; unmercifully, down in the center of that numbness, though, you know you will have to come back eventually.”
Reprinted by permission of Discovery, the University of Texas at Austin. Tom Lea’s artwork in this pamphlet is reproduced with the permission of the artist. The captions under each of the Lea paintings are the artist’s own words.
Benis M. Frank
“Counterattack” The phone rang. A battalion CO reported the Japs’ infiltration and the beginning of the counterattack. He asked what reserves were available and was told there were none. Small arms fire ahead of us became a continuous rattle. Abruptly three star shells burst in the sky. As soon as they died floating down, others flared to take their place. Then the howitzers just behind us opened up, hurling their charges over our heads, shaking the ground with their blasts.
“Artillery Support” At the southern end on our side of the field opposite the hill our artillerymen had dug holes and carried 75mm field howitzers to the sites. As we came down to them these batteries were firing continuously, throwing shells into the Jap hangars and buildings at the foot of the hill, and at caves in the hill where Jap mortar and artillery and machine-gun fire was dealing out misery to marines.
“The Blockhouse” Looking up at the head of the trail I could see the big Jap blockhouse that commanded the height. The thing was now a great jagged lump of concrete, smoking. I saw our lead man meet a front line detail posted by the blockhouse while the other troops advanced down the hill with the three tanks and the flamethrowers. Isolated Jap snipers were at work on our slope, small groups of marines fanned out on both sides of the trail to clean them out, while we climbed toward the blockhouse.
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