Advanced air strip construction: fighter bomber base, Conflans, France, November 1944

Original watercolor, signed and dated by Stevenson, of workmen with a military truck and crane building a bomber base air strip in Conflans, France. Notation on back: U.S. Aviation Engineers at an advanced fighter bomber field use a mobile Lorain moto-crane to unload pierced steel plank from a white 6x6 Army truck. The grey slag base used as a cushion for the planking has been leveled and packed on top of the mud of a former German air strip. Original watercolor, signed and dated by Stevenson, of workmen with a military truck and crane building a bomber base air strip in Conflans, France. Notation on back: U.S. Aviation Engineers at an advanced fighter bomber field use a mobile Lorain moto-crane to unload pierced steel plank from a white 6x6 Army truck. The grey slag base used as a cushion for the planking has been leveled and packed on top of the mud of a former German air strip. Stevenson enlisted in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in July 1941. He was one of the original soldier-artists at Fort Belvoir, VA. before accepting a position as a war artist in May 1943. In 1944 he was in southern England covering the preparations for the Normandy invasion and later depicted war damage in France and Germany. Gift of the artist 1994.