By Land

The ground war in Europe was won by men on foot. The infantry rifleman walked from the Normandy beaches to the Elbe with a rifle, a pack and whatever else he could carry, and the tanks and jeeps kept pace with him rather than the other way around.

The M4 Sherman was the tank that went with him — nearly 50,000 built, more than any other American armored vehicle; reliable, easy to repair, and outgunned by the heavier German designs it met in 1944. The jeep, more than 600,000 of them, did everything else.

The U.S. Army fielded eighty-nine divisions in the Second World War, and the infantry, a minority of the force, took the great majority of the casualties. The painting puts them where they belong in that picture: in front, walking.

Eight riflemen cross the picture in profile, left to right, spaced like the words of a sentence. The Sherman behind them is painted flat and dusty, the white star the brightest mark on the picture, with a jeep tucked further back. The sky takes most of the frame — a broad, cloudy, late-afternoon sky over plowed ground — so the column reads as small and steady beneath it. Long shadows stretch toward the viewer. The eye walks with them.