Photo Collection: Veteran's Sketches by Mimi Korach
In 1944, New York commercial artist Mimi Korach decided to do her part for the war effort by volunteering to work in a Merchant Seaman's Club, sketching portraits of lonely servicemen. A USO official suggested she go to local veterans hospitals to create sketches of patients that could be mailed to their distant families. Her next stop was a two-year tour of duty doing the same in Europe for GIs recuperating in evacuation hospitals. Korach, a short, dark-haired woman, teamed with another artist, Ann, a taller blonde (they were nicknamed "Blondie and Blackie"), traveling around Europe even after the fighting stopped. They sketched hundreds of servicemen as well as street scenes in occupied Germany and other devastated countries.
For more information about the Mimi Lesser Collection, visit the Library of Congress, Veteran's History Project. The collection contains more than 650 sketches.
Below are several from men of the 80th Infantry Division.
Special thanks and a hat-tip to Erik Johnson, who's grandfather, Berle Olson, served with the 317th during WWII. Erik "found" these sketches and passed
them along to us.
