12-03-2025, 02:35 PM
Goodreads says nothing at all about this, but the title is self-explanatory
Friend joined up in 1942 and recorded his experiences both in art and writing.
Towards the end of the Second World War there was pressure to commission a greater variety of artists for the official war art scheme. Friend was recommended by Sydney Ure Smith, who had published Gunner's Diary, and Louis McCubbin, Director of the Art Gallery of South Australia, who was advisor to the Memorial's art committee.
Friend was commissioned in 1945, working with the Royal Australian Air Force in Labuan and the 7th Division AIF in Borneo. He later worked in Balikpapan, but his plans to stay in the Pacific to record the surrender of the Japanese and the liberation of allied POWs were cancelled when he had to return to Australia with a severe tropical rash on his hands.