briarhistory asked: Is it ever explained how these war sketches made it back to the homefront? It's hard to imagine how an active soldier was able to preserve pieces of paper in such good shape until they returned home. Did they mail them back?

This varies, depending on the artist, period, and how the program looked at the time.

In WWII, soldier-artists working under the official program typically returned their work (either through the mail or they hand-carried it) to a central location in Europe or the Pacific, depending on which was closer. Art was then reviewed by a committee and either accepted by the Army or rejected and returned to the artist. Before it even made it this far, however, it had to pass the War Department censors, which were typically most concerned with whether art portrayed details of secret technology or troop locations or movements that were still secret. The art that passed the censors and was accepted by the committee was sent to the US and directly accessioned into the collection. Because these artists were active-duty soldiers, most of them worked on paper – because it was easy to carry. While much of what we have is in remarkably good condition because the artists went to great measures to keep it safe, in some pieces you can see fold creases, stains, and other condition problems that are a direct result of being carried through a war. Some artists have written about losing their sketchbooks, art left in a tent destroyed during an attack, or having to abandon sketches in order to save themselves or others. Some art, of course, was initially produced in safer areas and thus had a safer journey to the collecting areas.

Other programs during WWII, such as the Life Magazine and Abbott Laboratories programs, used artists who were not active-duty soldiers. These artists had shorter tours in-country than the soldier-artists did, and while they generally made field sketches that they carried home, a lot of their finished work was completed later in a studio rather than on the spot.

The MSC also has a lot of sketches that were sent through the mail – often on ‘V-Mail’ mailing paper. A number of soldier-artist correspondents for Yank Magazine made their sketches on v-mail paper for easy mailing back to the Yank office. Other soldiers who were not official artists doodled or sketched on letters home, and many of these have been donated to our collection over the years as well.