War Department - Major R. M. Smith, Fourth Infantry - 1918-07 - T-Shirt

This is a three-panel pencil study of the battalion headquarters at Bellois Farm in July 1918, showing a shattered doorway, soldiers on a stair and a half-collapsed farmhouse.

Visual Elements & Composition

The sheet is divided into three rectangular panels on cream paper. The upper left shows a timber door broken open onto a ruined interior, where a pointed-arch window is exposed by fallen masonry. The upper right shows a stone building with a tiled roof and a narrow stair, with several soldiers in steel helmets moving among the steps and a gate. The largest panel fills the lower half with a low farmhouse, its sagging roof and broken timbers open to the sky, a lean-to frame toppled at the right, and a single figure standing in the foreground. Graphite grey carries most of the drawing, with touches of red and green crayon on roofs and foliage. The sheet is labelled "Battalion Headquarters, Bellos Farm, July 11, 1918."

Meaning & Symbolism

The panels record the place where the headquarters of the Fourth Infantry under Major R. M. Smith was established. Captain George Harding drew the sheet as part of his wartime series made with the American Expeditionary Forces. The collapsed roof and shattered door show the physical cost of occupying ground recently fought over, while the soldiers on the stair show headquarters work carrying on inside it. The mood is weary and observational: command in the field meant staff working out of damaged farm buildings and moving between them.

Built for the Front of a Shirt

A tee is seen up close and across the chest, so the panels read best as a sequence. The three scenes sit side by side, and the eye moves from the broken door to the stair to the ruined farmhouse, the same order the drawing invites. Worn, the sketch becomes a record of one headquarters in one July, drawn by a man who was there.