page_title: Edward Ardizzone
section_title: Second World War
hierarchical_section_title: Edward Ardizzone / Second World War
caption_attribution_description: English: Ardizzone recorded this visit to Bremen in his diary on 26 April 1945: 'To Bremen again with Brian de Grineau. The city a dead one - ruins everywhere, a drunken Dutchman reeling down the street...Little groups of freed people and, further towards the dock area, soldiers and tanks.' An ink sketch relating to this work is found under this diary entry (IWM LD 7580 [C]). image: A street scene showing a group of British soldiers resting at a corner, looking exhausted or injured. In the background a line of soldiers is marching away single- file along the severly bomb-damaged street, with a Sherman tank following behind them.
context_page_description: Edward Jeffrey Irving Ardizzone, CBE RA, who sometimes signed his work "DIZ", was an English painter, print-maker and war artist, and the author and illustrator of books, many of them for children. For Tim All Alone, which he wrote and illustrated, Ardizzone won the inaugural Kate Greenaway Medal from the Library Association for the year's best children's book illustration by a British subject. For the 50th anniversary of the Medal in 2005, the book was named one of the top ten winning titles, selected by a panel to compose the ballot for public election of an all-time favourite.
context_section_description: In the Second World War, after a short spell serving in an anti-aircraft unit, Ardizzone was assigned to the War Office by the War Artists' Advisory Committee and posted overseas as a full-time official war artist. He first served with the British Expeditionary Force and depicted its retreat through France and Belgium before it was evacuated back to Britain from Boulogne in May 1940. In Britain, he recorded troops at their training camps and spent nights sketching in the London Underground, where tube tunnels were being used as air-raid shelters during the Blitz. Ardizzone spent the early part of 1941 travelling around Scotland. In January 1942 he recorded the arrival of American troops in Northern Ireland. In March of that year he went to Cairo and joined the British First Army on its march to Tunisia, and then joined the Eighth Army. By July 1943 Ardizzone was in Sicily, where he witnessed combat at close quarters, and unusually for him, painted the aftermath of the fighting. He travelled on through Italy with the Eighth Army until April 1944, when he flew to Algiers, from where he sailed back to Britain. In June 1944 he went to France during the Allied invasion, but by September 1944 was back in Italy. He again travelled widely there and witnessed the fall of Reggio Calabria and Naples. He spent the winter of 1944 in Italy before travelling to Germany for the final months of the War. By the time Ardizzone returned to England in May 1945 he had completed almost 400 sketches and watercolours of the War, most of which, along with his wartime diaries, are held at the Imperial War Museum. His early experiences between Arras and Boulogne are illustrated and described in his book Baggage to the Enemy (London 1941), while Diary of a War Artist, published in 1974, described his later experiences during the conflict.
caption: Ardizzone recorded this visit to Bremen in his diary on 26 April 1945: 'To Bremen again with Brian de Grineau'
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