Cover art of The Queensland Digger

From the mid-1930s to the early 1940s, the covers of The Queensland Digger featured original art by Australia’s leading illustrators and cartoonists. Occasionally, a work from World War I (WWI) that held emotional significance to the returned community was also used. 

In this, the second of a two-part series examining the early covers of The Queensland Digger, two of the most frequently published images – and what they reveal about the post-war lives of returned men – are explored. 

Part 1 of this series can be found here: ANZAC cover art of The Queensland Digger

The memory of lost mates: Will Dyson’s enduring tribute

At Messines in August 1917, artist Will Dyson (1880-1938) picked up a stick of charcoal and began sketching a soldier whom he had noticed quietly and carefully carving a rising sun onto the battlefield cross of his dead mate. In 1938, The Queensland Digger selected Dyson’s poignant image – The Mate (In Memory of W – Machine Gun Company Messines Ridge) – for the cover of its Christmas issue.

Its sombre themes of sacrifice and loss appear at odds with the religious symbolism of birth and joy generally associated with Christmas. However, the selection of Dyson’s image spoke to deeper emotions that continued to connect many returned men to the mates that they lost two decades earlier.

Image: December 1938 cover of The Queensland Digger featuring Will Dyson’s The Mate (In memory of W – Machine Gun Company Messines Ridge), 1917. This image was used for the covers of six issues, including  four successive Christmas covers. State Library of Queensland.

The soldier’s artist

Thirty-six-year-old Will Dyson was Australia’s first official war artist. Intent on capturing the essence of the Australian soldier, he shunned the meagre comforts of headquarters to live with the troops at the front. 

Dyson also shunned heroic expressions of art, preferring instead to record the humanity of the diggers’ lives: men returning exhausted from battle; the tedium of trench life; the desolate and dismal conditions in which they lived; the loss of comrades.

Image: Lieutenant Will Dyson, sketching near Ville-sur Ancre, in France in 1918. Dyson was wounded twice while sketching but returned to the front to continue his work. Photographer unknown, AWM EO2437.

In 1918, Dyson’s observations of The Mate anticipated the importance that memory would play in the lives of returned men after the war:   
“Remember our friendships at 20! At that age a friendship is a thing intense and unquestioning – it is blasphemy to think of it as anything less than eternal… Normally those friendships wither painlessly in their season, but this generation… will live with the memory of heroic friendships cut off at the height of their boyish splendour and which can never suffer the slow deterioration of disillusionment.”   

After the war, Dyson returned briefly to Australia, where he contributed to the establishment of the Australian War Memorial. In January 1938, at the age of 57, he died peacefully in an armchair at his London studio. 

Dyson’s death was reported widely in newspapers across Australia. Former war correspondent and friend Charles Bean wrote that to “the survivors of the AIF, he will always be remembered as the most intimate portrayer of the Australian soldier”. The Returned Sailors and Soldiers Imperial League of Australia (RSSILA) – the forerunner to what we know today as the RSL – called upon the Government to exhibit Dyson’s war art in each state of the Commonwealth as a tribute to the artist. This request was politely declined. 

Image: Will Dyson, Australia’s first official war artist. Photographer unknown, c.1917, Alchetron 

The Queensland Digger’s 1938 Christmas cover may well have been a belated tribute to Dyson. However, its use for the front of four successive December issues speaks eloquently of the memory of lost mates and their enduring importance to returned men at a time traditionally associated with the comforts of family and friends. 

The family: Ian McBain and the post-war home

Of the artists who featured on the covers of The Queensland Digger, works by Ian McBain (1905-1995) appeared most frequently. The young illustrator appears to have come to the attention of State Branch after he designed the January 1935 cover of The Whiz-Bang, the monthly periodical of the now defunct Brisbane RSL Sub Branch.

Image: Ian McBain’s first cover for the League appears to have been the January 1935 cover for The Whiz-Bang, the monthly journal of the now defunct Brisbane RSL Sub Branch. RSL South Eeastern District collection.

McBain initially designed the cover of The Queensland Digger’s 1936 ANZAC issue (number), before being commissioned to create another three works. Two of these were used for more than half the covers published from 1936 to 1942 and both featured the drama of the deep red palette frequently favoured by editorial staff.

McBain’s second cover debuted in June 1936. It captured the essence of comfortable domesticity that rewarded many men in the decade after the war. 

A quiet domestic scene with a darker undertone

In the lower half of McBain’s image, a returned man is depicted smoking his pipe while his wife rests her head upon his shoulder. To the right, their young son sits with his elbows upon his knees and chin resting in his hands. Shadowy figures of soldiers in the background suggest that the father is recounting his experiences of war. However, not all is as it seems. 

McBain was nine years old when war was declared in 1914. His was a generation affected by the familial and societal impact of the physically and mentally injured fathers who returned home after the war. Shell shock – the euphemism for what we now recognise as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) – haunted many men. 

Considerable stigma was associated with the condition and, regardless of the magnitude or impact of injuries a man sustained, families who welcomed a soldier home were perceived as the lucky ones; they had no right to complain when so many had lost husbands, fathers and sons in the conflict. It is little wonder that so many children would look back in years to come and recall that their fathers “never spoke about the war”. 

Image: Ian McBain’s June 1938 cover featured a father reliving his wartime experiences to his family. It also featured State President Raymond Huish, who had been elected for seven successive State Presidencies. Huish would continue to be re-elected President until his retirement in 1967. State Library of Queensland.

The silence of fathers, the questions of sons

Within this context, re-examining McBain’s cover reveals a different story. Rather than sharing his memories of the war, the father appears to be reliving it: soldiers rush into battle with bayonets affixed while, in the distance, the horizon erupts under shellfire and two diggers reel and stagger with the impact of an enemy bullet. A man, with his rifle shouldered, glances back at a little boy struggling to make sense of his mother’s concern and his father’s silence. 

McBain’s subject matter evidently resonated with returned men as the image was used for another five covers during 1936. Perhaps it offered a small measure of comfort by acknowledging the suffering of those with shell shock and normalising it within the League’s community. It also foreshadowed McBain’s own enlistment in the Army during World War II. 

The RSSILA continued to use McBain’s family image until mid-1942, after which The Queensland Digger adopted photographs for its cover.