Wartime Graffiti

Of course graffiti is usually done with the intension of leaving ones mark, or memorializing an event or other significant thing, but I feel there's something very special about wartime graffiti. It's the context in which it's created, a period when permanence and longevity must have appeared like luxuries, things that those of the time must have wished and longed for, being always surrounded by the evidence of lifes fragility. What must have been going through the minds of those who carve what could be their last mark in this world. When I come across wartime graffiti I'm always led to wonder whether of not the carver survived, hoping that they did, though treating their marks with reverence as if they may not have.

These two pieces were on adjacent trees, a prominent clump of Beeches clustered near the brow of a hill, set on the corner of a minor road: BENNETT 29. 4. 44 and ME???Y US ARMY I believe are contemporary with each other, the letters above FM ???, ????, MG may or may not be contemporary. Even more poignant as these carvers came a great distance to find themselves in another land waiting to go to war; the date 29th April 1944 is only weeks from D Day, a hard day for the American Army; were these guys part of that and how did they fare? I'd love to find out.