Service number
Boyd (Service number V101720) was 20 when conscripted to serve in the militia from 12 May 1941 until 25 March 1944. Initially serving with the 2nd Cavalry Division, which later became the 2nd Armoured Division (Australia), Boyd was transferred to the 4th Division (Australia) for full time service, and then Army Headquarters Cartography Company. Boyd predominantly served in the Bendigo area as a Cartographer. With the perspective of his own lived experience of service, Boyd's expressionistic wartime paintings, including images of cripples and those deemed unfit for war service, were considered painful images of the dispossessed and the outcast.