War Department - Dispatch Motor Cycle - 1918-07 - T-Shirt

A dispatch rider throws up a sheet of water as he drives his motorcycle through a ford, with a wrecked cart lying in the grass at the left.

Visual Elements & Composition

The drawing is built in charcoal grey and pale grey, with touches of grass green and a rust tone in the ground. The rider sits at the right, leaning forward, his helmet and dark coat the strongest darks on the sheet. The splash of water and the rider are the most finished passages, while the landscape stays loose and recessive. Behind them a rough bank of scrub climbs to a bare hillside scored with earthworks, softened into smudged grey, and a low wooden hut sits among broken trees. The lettering GEO. HARDING A.E.F. and JULY 1918 appears on the sheet.

Meaning & Symbolism

The dispatch rider carried orders and messages between headquarters and the front, often over exposed tracks and broken ground. The motorcycle was chosen for this work because it could move quickly where larger vehicles could not, so the rider stands for speed and communication in the chaos of the line. The title places the scene near Sainte-Menehould in the Argonne, and the July 1918 date marks the Allied counter-offensives, a period of intense movement. The drawing is by Geo. Harding of the American Expeditionary Forces and belongs to the War Department's pictorial records of the Western Front, which documented the army's daily work as well as its fighting.

Carried Through the Ford

Printed on a heavy cotton tee, the rider and his splash of water sit across the chest where they read at a glance, and the bleak hillside and hut hold the edges of the design. Worn close to the body, the drawing keeps the restless, urgent movement of a messenger pressing forward through difficult ground.