Semper Fi, Harry Jackson
“In 1942, Private First Class Harry Jackson USMC joined the Fifth Marine Amphibious Corps as General Intelligence’s first combat-sketch artist. He fought in three amphibious assault victories across the Central Pacific; wounded twice, he suffered from the effects of his injuries for the rest of his life.”
That quote comes from his bio on the website for the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, where some of his greatest works reside.
Harry Jackson was not only to become the youngest-ever official Marine Corps Combat Artist (in 1944), and a celebrated abstract expressionist and cowboy artist (1946–2011), he was also to become, decades later, my husband and the father of my children. We were together for eighteen years. And when they say he suffered from his injuries “for the rest of his life,” it’s the truth.
The war had ground him up and spit him out with a lethal combo of grand mal, petit mal, and psychomotor epilepsy, along with mood disorders and PTSD. It was rarely visible in a way that made you think poor guy, look at what the war did to him.
His behavior could be outrageous and infuriating. He was often verbally brutal. If he wanted something, he was relentless — would call at any time of the day and night…
