Winter Witness: Will Dyson\u27s Australia At War and Other War Drawings

Late in August 1916, with \u27Fanny Durack\u27 diving from the steeple of the Albert CathedraJI and Pozieres reduced to rubble, Will Dyson applied to join the Australians on the Western Front. This decision to go to France to, as he explained, \u27interpret in a series of drawings for national preservation, the sentiments and special Australian characteristics of our Army? was, perhaps, stimulated by the emotional reception given to the Anzacs when they marched in London on 25 April 1916. But Dyson\u27s nationalist feelings -a complex mixture of anxiety and pride - had been deepening since news began to filter back to England of the Gallipoli Campaign, and as the Australian Fifth D1vision prepared to enter the war. It was not until December, however, that Dyson, now a lieutenant, landed in France and began his war drawings. !his was not th