page_title: Claud Lovat Fraser
section_title: World War One
hierarchical_section_title: Claud Lovat Fraser / World War One
caption_attribution_description: English: A three-quarters length portrait of a man in a arabic costume.
context_page_description: Claud Lovat Fraser was an English artist, designer and author.
context_section_description: In October 1914 Fraser enlisted with the Inns of Court Officers' Training Corps, and was quickly commissioned into the 14th Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry. After a year's training, in September 1915 the Battalion was sent out to France as part of 21st Division, one of three Reserve divisions for the forthcoming Battle of Loos. Fraser was fortunate to survive that battle unscathed; many of his battalion's officers were killed or wounded and a quarter of its men also became casualties. In December of that year, by now serving in the Ypres Salient, the battalion withstood a German gas attack in which Fraser may have suffered injuries to his lungs. He was promoted to captain in early 1916 but in mid-February that year he was invalided home, suffering from shellshock. During his period on active service he had produced many sketches, of the battlefields and of life behind the lines. Several of these sketches were submitted to the Imperial War Museum who purchased six of them in November 1917. Through continuing poor health he was never again sent abroad. He served as a clerk in the War Office on visual propaganda from October 1916 through to late April 1917, then at the Army Record Office in Hounslow until his discharge in March 1919.
  In August 1916 Fraser met the American-born actress Grace Inez Crawford in her theatre dressing room. By Grace's description he was ‘tall, brown-haired and hazel-eyed, big-boned with a very fine white skin and a beautifully moulded Grecian mouth’. It was love at first sight and they were married in February 1917, and had a daughter, Helen. Grace's career interests contributed to Fraser's increased involvement in theatrical and costume design.
caption: Behind the British Front (1916) (Art.IWM ART 156)
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