Victor Lundy, a 21-year-old soldier during WWII carried his sketchbook everywhere that he went. He captured everything about his deployment – the macabre, the curious, and the mundane take up the pages with a shocking vividness that shows us what being a soldier was really like. He didn’t shy away from something just because it might make someone else squeamish. He sketched what he saw without censor, and the images are going viral. 
And you know, we were far from even thinking of combat. They didn’t tell us. We didn’t know what was going to happen, once we landed. …—you know, the day it happens they tell you.”
House where Kane & I got the roast chicken & cognac.” Sept. 16, 1944
Before pay day – shooting craps for cigarettes -” June 1, 1944
Lundy was interested in architecture, and the now 92-year-old veteran lived on to have an acclaimed career in architecture after he returned home from the war in 1944. He knows exactly how lucky he was to have gone home at all.
He donated 8 sketchbooks to the Library of Congress, where they may be viewed by anyone who is interested. The digitally remastered sketches are incredible, and imagining a soldier having time to sketch puts the experience into perspective. Lundy took every spare moment that he could to record the daily life of a soldier, and it is an invaluable piece of history that he hopes no one will ever forget.
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