Forgotten Warriors: Combat Art from Vietnam
By (Author) Dennis L. Noble
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Praeger Publishers Inc
30th October 1992
United States
Tertiary Education
Non Fiction
The Arts: treatments and subjects
History of art
704.9
Hardback
224
This text combines prose with illustrations created by combat artists in the US military. Dr Noble has assembled a collection of 153 reproductions printed in black and white, arranged with oral histories, letters and other commentaries to give the reader a more intimate understanding of the combat soldier who served in Vietnam and what he had to endure. "Forgotten Warriors" is not intended to argue the merits of US involvement in Southeast Asia. Rather, through the visual impact of the illustrations, the soldiers themselves express what the Vietnam experience was like in a way that aims to be different from other works on the subject. The main focus of the book is on the way artists saw the world of the "grunt": patrols, life in the rear, fighting the terrain and weather, tests of endurance, the machines of war and the effects of combat and its aftermath. The reader is also given a sense of how some writers and artists felt about the country and the people of South Vietnam. To date, our perceptions of the Vietnam war have been influenced largely by movies, television and novels. Recognising this, Dr Noble enlisted Professor William J. Palmer, an authority on the media and their reportage of the war, to provide an essay that aims to allow the reader to compare his or her past impressions with the art works contained in this book.
Dennis Noble is to be commended for his effort to bring the reality of the soldier's life in Vietnam to us through text and picture. For art historians and for those fascinated by the Vietnam war, this is a book worth perusing.-University of Utrecht, the Netherlands
His valuable new book, . . . 153 well-chosen, in-country art reproductions for that very purpose. The accompanying text helps illuminate the war from an on-the-ground perspective.-The Veteran
Noble gathers watercolors, oils, acrylics, and simple sketches from a number of military archives, and offers a balanced narrative to place them in context. U.S. military artists mainly took infantrymen as their subjects, but there is also work here on life in the rear, on Vietnam and Vietnamese children, as well as portraits of the wounded and of surgeons in operating rooms. Noble quotes James Jones, who said that government art is 'by nature propaganda, ' but makes a strong case that what he has collected is not. . . . Noble's efforts fill a gap, and his documentation of U.S. Coast Guard activities in Vietnam is unique.-Booklist
The kind of book that will endure.-Indochina Chronology
The kind of book that will endure.Indochina Chronology
"Dennis Noble is to be commended for his effort to bring the reality of the soldier's life in Vietnam to us through text and picture. For art historians and for those fascinated by the Vietnam war, this is a book worth perusing."-University of Utrecht, the Netherlands
"His valuable new book, . . . 153 well-chosen, in-country art reproductions for that very purpose. The accompanying text helps illuminate the war from an on-the-ground perspective."-The Veteran
"The kind of book that will endure."-Indochina Chronology
"Noble gathers watercolors, oils, acrylics, and simple sketches from a number of military archives, and offers a balanced narrative to place them in context. U.S. military artists mainly took infantrymen as their subjects, but there is also work here on life in the rear, on Vietnam and Vietnamese children, as well as portraits of the wounded and of surgeons in operating rooms. Noble quotes James Jones, who said that government art is 'by nature propaganda, ' but makes a strong case that what he has collected is not. . . . Noble's efforts fill a gap, and his documentation of U.S. Coast Guard activities in Vietnam is unique."-Booklist
DENNIS L. NOBLE has devoted his life and career to the military and its history. Retired from the U.S. Coast Guard in 1978, Dr. Noble is the author of several military history books. He manages the Washington State Library Branch at the Clallam Bay Corrections Center and teaches at Peninsula College in Port Angeles, Washington.