The European Theater

From the Normandy beaches on June 6, 1944, to the German surrender on May 8, 1945, the U.S. Army in Europe fought for eleven months without a pause: through the hedgerows, to the German frontier, into the Hürtgen Forest and the Ardennes, over the Rhine to the Elbe.

That winter was the hardest stretch. The Ardennes offensive of December caught the front thin and the weather at its worst, and for six weeks the war was fought in snow — by infantry in overcoats, by Shermans on iced roads, by men who had been in the line since summer.

The painting shows that winter from the roadside: infantry walking past a Sherman at dusk, a shattered pine wood behind. The Army took more casualties in the Ardennes than in any other battle. The men kept walking east.

Eleven men in long coats walk right, heads down, rifles slung, each a little darker than the snow he is crossing. The Sherman sits behind them at the crest of the road, its star the one bright mark. On the right a wood of blasted pines runs to the edge of the picture; on the left the sky opens to a thin band of sunset. The whole picture is painted in a cold, grainy gray. It looks like the temperature it depicts.