The War in Biafra

The following art is for a book titled: The War in Biafra: Mercenaries, Soldiers, Churches & Scoundrels in the Epic Struggle of Independence, to be published late next year.

If you were a participant in the war, or were a witness in any way or form to the conflict, or happened to be in Nigeria during the critical years from 1964-70, worked for the Red Cross, the PR outfits or the churches, or even protested the conflict in the United States and Europe over continued British aid to Federalist Nigeria, or stood against the Biafrans, or simply have something to say, I would love to hear your story. Drop me an e-mail by using the “contact me” page linked in the menu above or leave a message on this page.

All images are in medium resolution; click for larger picture.

What this is all about (a brief explanation): Look at world maps today and you will find no mention of the nation of Biafra. It has  suffered an attempt at being expunged from the consciousness of human history.

The country of Nigeria in West Africa, recently known for its e-mail scams, is at the center of this story. Essentially a British construct brought into a national identity without considering regional loyalties, Nigeria can best be identified as the unnatural union of three culturally disparate territories often at odds with each other — the largely-Muslim North, the traditionalist West and finally, the largely-Christian East which in 1967 — seven years after Nigerian Independence from Britain — attempted to break away because of violent persecution. Later christened Biafra, the East’s most numerous peoples are the Ibos, the so-called “Jews of Africa” because of their formidable intellect and perseverance but also, as one historian recently argued, because of an ancient link to the tribes of Israel.

But the stunted potential of the Ibos has been written about in the past, with one famous writer, Frederick Forsyth, becoming so committed to Biafran cause that he wrote one propagandized book on the matter and later published a bestselling novel about mercenaries who conquer a new African country for the Ibos (remember The Dogs of War?).

Nigeria, incensed by the Biafran secession, engaged in a police action which soon transformed into full blown warfare, fought not only in part over oil in Biafra, but also over personal ambitions and British interests in policy and investment, reasons which gave the world its first prototypical image of the starving African child, and the combatants, the ignominious honor of conducting the first modern war in Africa. It was also a war between two English-trained African armies, internationalized by mercenaries and adventurers, gun-runners, journalists, pilots, aid workers, the clergy and the World Council of Churches who, as the months wore on, stepped in to aid the starving and a country.

A Note on the Process: All art was drawn using Adobe Photoshop & Illustrator and are in the guise above for purely illustrative purposes on this site. The map, composed at 1:1,000,000 scale, took about 47 hours of work, spread over 5 days. It survived to see completion despite my working while on a three-day visit to a friend’s house at the other end of the state, in a house packed with overzealous little kids and hyperactive dogs. The version of the map posted is at medium-low resolution.

The Art of Map-Making

The maps below were the result of a sort of personal refresher of my Adobe Illustrator skills and were finished on two free days. Since I like my efforts to translate towards something more cogent in the future (or risk feeling really stupid in the future) – in this case, maybe a study on Calvert or Wingate – all the maps are of a particular action in 1944. (Click images for larger picture)

The Thin Red Line: A Second Look

In the summer of 1998, two important American movies arrived in theaters that inadvertently triggered the current renaissance of books and films on the Second World War. Both were classified as “war films,” and both were so in completely different senses of the term.

The first: After a brief, unexplained interlude at a war cemetery six decades after the war it went back in time: Long lines of landing craft plow through choppy gray seas, carrying clammy, nauseous faces straining with anticipation and fear at the ominous dark country ahead. The crafts crunch up the sable, chilly beach and the ramps drop, allowing men to be torn to pieces by a devastating barrage of machine-gun fire.

The second film preferred to be more ambiguous but soon more landing craft appeared, this time with the gray of the English Channel replaced by the blue spray of the South Pacific. Once again nervous and fearful faces occupy the screen; groups of men huddle together and pray. And as the landing crafts ground up on the beach to the sounds of Taiko drums, men scramble out, ready to confront the enemy only to find…nothing. Not a single bullet, not the whistle of one. The suspense shattered into anti-climax, the film goes on to meander, skirting art and poetry, often focusing on the rich landscape of the South Pacific instead of what it had been advertised for – war.

Obviously the first film is Saving Private Ryan, which went on to garner 11 Academy Award nominations of which it won five. The second is The Thin Red Line, directed by the reclusive Terence Malick, nominated for seven Academy Awards – of which it won absolutely zero. But while Private Ryan has established a reputation as a timeless masterpiece, Malick’s film, based on the James Jones classic novel of the same name,  has continued to enrage and enthrall viewers since its release.

I saw both films within a year of each other. Private Ryan on the big screen; Thin Red Line on television. Private Ryan with its scenes of savagery and careless evil forced me to reconsider the subject of my growing expertise, the Second World War. The Thin Red Line, in contrast, filled me with contempt. Yet ten years on I find myself with a reevaluated opinion of Malick’s visually stunning, deeply enigmatic picture.

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Saving Private Ryan, in short, was made by a great director, but it is not a great film. The Thin Red Line, on the other hand, is a great film made by a director “of towering reputation.” It can arguably be called the greatest war film in the history of cinema to date – If only it shed some of its distracted meandering. But those who criticize the film as a bad movie have clearly misunderstood what they have watched. I certainly misunderstood it on my first viewing. Treating combat as a necessary aside, the film is a philosophical examination of the effects of war on man – but that is not to say that the scenes of combat are watered.

The original novel was a sequel to Jones’ epic From Here to Eternity with a few central characters from the earlier book transposed into the second book although under different names. Malick’s focus is on one of these, the Christ-like Private Witt (brilliantly portrayed by Jim Caviezel), whose spiritual ancestor was Private Prewitt (literally pre-Witt) in From Here to Eternity.[*] Still, Witt was only a minor character in the second book compared to the others. Malick actually shot seven hours of film focusing on most of them, only to cut it down to three for theatrical release – with the deleted footage capable of supporting an entirely different version of the film – he says.

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Witt: “Is the baby afraid of me?” | Melanesian Mother: “Yes.” | Witt: “Are you afraid of me?” | Melanesian Mother: “Yes…little bit.” | Witt: “Why?” | Melanesian Mother: “Cause you look…Army!” (laughs) | Witt: “Well, that don’t matter…It don’t matter.”

(It takes nearly 12 minutes into the movie for the audience to realize that Witt has gone AWOL and is hiding out with the Melanesians)

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Two Perez Women

Mother and Daughter: Two Generations of the Perez Family, North Texas.

A Note on the Process: I don’t especially prefer to draw much so this one was by special request. It was composed with some haste on unfamiliar matte and somehow the result looks better on paper than on scanned copy. Anyway, it was difficult to compose the finer details on this type of paper or achieve a semblance of chiaroscuro.

Tintin and The Life of Hergé

Click image to view mid-resolution jpg (1.3 mb) or use the link below for single-page, high-resolution PDF (4 mb)

Tintin

Norway July 22 – The Anatomy of an Attack