Howard Brodie

He sketched everything from Guadalcanal to the Battle of the Bulge (particularly the Malmedy massacre), and had an uncanny ability to capture the emotions of his subjects and record a scene with great attention to detail.

During the Vietnam War, as he was returning to the press camp at the rear of the front, he started a conversation with another correspondent to which he protested against American troops executing prisoners.

The correspondent showed him photographs of Viet-Cong prisoners being shot in the neck and when Brodie protested again, he was told “all wars have had their brutality”.

His first-hand experience of conflicts led to him working for several war movies such as Lewis Milestone's 1959 Pork Chop Hill, John Wayne's 1968 Green Berets, and Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now.

Brodie's works are collected in Drawing Fire: A Combat Artist at War Pacific Europe Korea Indochina Vietnam and can also be seen in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress, the New Britain Museum of American Art, and the San Francisco Olympic Club.. As The New York Times has stated, "His sketch of the black militant Bobby Seale gagged and strapped to his chair became the image that epitomized the trial of the Chicago Seven, the leaders of protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.