In order to impress Clark, Cole took a leave of absence from teaching at Hull to accompany a trawler assigned to coastal minesweeper work and also to sail aboard a destroyer on Gibraltar convoy duties.

As well as depicting the impact of the siege on the civilian population, Cole took part in Operation Corkscrew, the Allied action to recover the island of Pantelleria.

[5] Clark and the WAAC committee were impressed with the unflinching way Cole had dealt, in his pictures, with the violence he had witnessed in Greece and assigned him to record the aftermath of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

[6] In the camp, Cole produced three large, panoramic oil paintings of survivors, British troops and captured German guards.

Cole went on jungle patrols with a unit of the Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment and met Burmese guerrilla fighters.

Cole made several paintings of liberated prisoners of war, including individuals who had lost limbs or were recovering from beriberi or from being starved.

In 1938, Cole had married Brenda Harvey, who had been born Barbara Harris, an artists' model and a friend of Dylan Thomas.