ABOUT
The War Murals Project is dedicated to the historical and educational documentation, preservation, and discussion of the deployment art and stories of those who have served in the Global War on Terror- particularly the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. For over 20 years the painted T-Walls and barriers of the Middle East are ubiquitous downrange but are frequently overlooked and quickly ignored once the original artist return home. Since 2018 this project has worked to display the art and tell the stories of the troops and events behind them.
There are thousands of these murals and graffiti pieces scattered across the world that are left in a state of decay to fade away in the harsh climates they are left in or are hastily painted over as bases closed and the mission changed. Many are already gone forever and many more are likely only survive in photographs as a quick snapshot of a unit's identity, and a monument to a life changing experience for those that served. Please join in collecting, cataloging and sharing the deployment art and the memories they represent.
Contact us at warmurals@gmail.com to obtain permission to use any of the content on this site or for general press inquiries.
Use without expressed permission is strictly prohibited. All contributions and comments are subject to admin review. The project is slowly working to migrate from its original site- warmurals.com to this new platform in hopes that the art can be viewed, searched and engaged with as a searchable digital museum.
For news and updates of the project- please follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. Please be respectful and do not share any content which is classified, violates OPSEC or contains PII. The appearance of DoD visual information does not imply or constitute endorsement.
PRESS
- Task & Purpose: A former Army Guardsman is documenting the murals troops left behind during the Global War on Terror (2019)
- VFW Magazine- T-Wall Art: Troops Left their Marks in the War Zones (2020)
- The Boardwalk Podcast Episode 29: Interview with War Murals Project creator Eric Strand (FEB2022)
- Lethal Minds Journal: 'Losing Our History in the Age of Information - The War Murals Project' (JUL2022)
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We live in an extraordinary time of connection and connectivity- I recall being struck by that notion in 2018 when even at a remote Iraqi FOB surrounded by bombed out buildings that I was still able to connect to the Wi-Fi network at the chapel tent named ‘A Signal from God’. It has truly never been easier or faster for a deployed military service member to connect with their friends and family back home and create and share photos, videos, messages, and other records.
With this massive benefit comes an overlooked risk beyond the growing threats posed to operational security by having an online presence- what is created digitally can just as easily disappear- the records and data we are drowning in incentivize being shared for an instant, not saved. This information quickly becomes overwhelming to organize and analyze. The things you experienced 2 phones or 1 laptop ago can quickly be lost forever and even that hard drives many use to store their old deployment records can only be relied on for maybe 8 years in reasonable conditions either due to a component failing or the data simply decaying on the device.
This creates a knowledge gap for both veterans and the military that went on for years after the Global War on Terror (GWOT) began and that only gained the attention it deserved when several journalists began publishing articles on how the US Army was systemically failing to keep field records, after action reports, and contextual lessons of units and areas of responsibility. What was once reported and filed away by higher commands remained on computers in austere environments. If they didn’t break in the harsh environment they were in, the computers were all to often reimaged and mountains of poorly managed electronic records were deleted when new units took over, bases were closed, and new priorities were made. It was not until 2013 the Department of Defense began a focused effort to recover and consolidate field records from the wars, yet despite these initiatives (Publica, 2013), the gap continues to this day as highlighted by the U.S. Military Academy’s Modern War Institute in 2017:
"Even for those wars with no living veterans — whether the American Revolution or World War I — we can remember. We can access digital archives of battlefield maps. We can examine lists online of personnel who fought in each battle. We can read written orders from commanders, or personal diaries, journals and letters sent by soldiers to their loved ones. Unfortunately, our recent conflicts will be difficult to remember this way. That is because for the first 10-plus years of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military lost or deleted a majority of its field records. And, although the military has since made a greater commitment to preserve records, an outdated archival system limits their usefulness." (Spencer, 2017)
If these institutions of the US military can recognize the risks here and still come up short, we should reflect on what veterans of the GWOT can do individually as we move further from the conflicts and try to remember and explain the history of 'the forever wars' to our comrades, families, and community.
In my work connecting with veterans and doing online research for the War Murals Project (The War Murals Project, 2022) I have heard the frustration from vets excited to find the site and plug in their dusty computers and old flash drives to share their photos of the deployment art and war graffiti the project focuses on, only to find components broken and the data corrupted. Access to old emails is lost, or the site that was hosting their old war blogs and digital diaries shut down. Even later deployments in the 2010s that were better documented on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram have some significant limitations- have you ever tried to find old photos on that platform? What about rereading old messages? Maybe one was diligent enough to pool things together into an album but almost all that information is otherwise disorganized, unsearchable and without context on a platform that isn't guaranteed to be around for as long as you will.
Hopefully historical archiving systems on platforms and devices will mature, but in the meantime individuals ought to be smarter than their grandfathers about how their experiences are preserved since most no longer just shove their papers, photographs, and letters home in an old footlocker in the basement for decades where they are often just as legible as they were the day they were put there. That means backing your device’s files up onto a hard drive, backing up that hard drive into the cloud, scanning old photos you only have printed, printing out photos, saving copies of an old blogs and articles elsewhere, and forwarding your old emails to another account; because history, and the lessons we can get from it, gets lost forever, surprisingly quickly.
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- Army Magazine: Saving Troops War Zone Art (AUG2022)
- The Foxhole Podcast: The Episode Where Eric Curates The History of War (2023)
- Lethal Minds Journal: A Lost Masterpiece and Missed Opportunity- The Story of a Syrian War Mural - War Murals (SEP2023)
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It could be said that art is not confined to museums and galleries; it can be found in every corner of our world, waiting to be discovered. Well before ‘Kilroy’ was reminding others where he had been on the frontlines of the Second World War, Soldiers have been leaving their mark in dangerous and austere locations- leaving a legacy that endures to this day and which begs to be preserved.
More than two years after victory was declared over the Islamic State in December 2018, and the orders for an unexpected withdrawal of U.S. Troops came down from the White House, the US military continues its ongoing mission to defeat Daesh in Northern Syria. There, an estimated 900 service members are still supporting Operation Inherent Resolve and they are taking part in the long and rich tradition of expressing themselves by leaving their artistic mark in combat zones.
Tens of thousands of art pieces painted on concrete blast walls and pieces of construction plywood once decorated the hot and dusty bases in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kuwait. But nearly all of these pieces, which had been carefully created with whatever paints and supplies a veteran artist was able to get their hands on, have long since been painted over, abandoned, or destroyed, with few exceptions.
In 2021 at a forward operating base in Syria, Soldiers largely from the Alabama and Louisiana Army National Guard serving under Task Force Warclub were looking to leave their mark and emphasize the involvement of the US military within the context of the long and perplexing Syrian War.
The result was breathtaking, an incredible 4 by 12-foot reinterpretation of Picasso's legendary 1937 masterpiece, Guernica, on the walls in the dining facility of a base known as RLZ. This version showcases a US soldier leaning out of his MRAP trying to make sense of the quagmire around him: an emaciated goat and suffering horse are tangled up in barbed wire amidst the turmoil of a destroyed attack drone and the body of an ISIS militant as an explosion rocks the scene overhead on a background of churning oil wells. Overall, the piece does well to channel Picasso's cubist representation of the horrors of war and the suffering of the innocent using a muted color palette and distorted figures, while reminding the Soldiers hanging their equipment on the wall before eating their meals of the profound importance of their mission and the challenges they face.
The artist, Captain Peter Drasutis' of the 1-173 Infantry Regiment (ALARNG) under, 256th Infantry Brigade Combat Team (LAARNG) is and artist by trade and outside of the military works as a full time illustrator and designer for Mardi Gras parade floats in New Orleans. He created the cubist representation of the ongoing conflict to instill pride in the Soldiers while displaying a profound and poignant visual narrative that captured the intricate layers and complexities faced by those involved. With the help of several other Soldiers, the mural was completed on plywood over several weeks in the summer of 2021. The mural served as a powerful reminder of the sacrifices made by servicemen and women in the pursuit of peace and stability in the region and was widely celebrated by the servicemembers serving there.
Sadly, despite some initial efforts in 2022 to save this extraordinary piece, it met a tragic fate reportedly around April 2023 when the entrance to the DFAC was redesigned. The mural was taken down, unceremoniously torn into pieces, and subsequently vanished from sight- its final fate unknown.
This unfortunate occurrence illustrates something that has been all too common during the Global War on Terror. Countless war memorials, murals and paintings, created by soldiers for soldiers, have been lost, destroyed, or left to wither away in the desert sands of the Middle East with little regard for documentation or preservation.
Organizations such as The War Murals Project and Graffiti of War have recognized the urgent need to document and preserve these authentic and deeply meaningful artworks, and have taken up the crucial task of independently archiving them where there appears to be a gap in the military's history departments in documenting such valuable cultural expressions.
As Captain Drasutis’ piece was relatively light, made of wood and able to be broken into several pieces, we really missed an opportunity to preserve it, unlike the heavy t-wall barrier art pieces ubiquitous in the GWOT. We must take this as a lesson that we must strive to ensure that these poignant visual testimonies are saved for posterity.
The artistic contributions of soldiers like Pete Drasutis are a testament to the indomitable human spirit amidst the ravages of war. These murals encapsulate the lived experiences, emotions, and unique perspectives of those who have stood on the frontlines of the Global War on Terror. A rare opportunity for expression in a culture famous for being uniform, pieces like these offer a snapshot for servicemembers to truly say “we here here,” “this is us and who we are,” “this is who we honor or what was important to us at this time."
Logistically, taking these art pieces down would have no doubt posed challenges, but one would guess that there were plenty of avenues that could have been explored.- After all, the US Military has its own Field Historians or Military History Detachments in relevant regions. But it seems that the work of documenting and preserving these works often falls on chaplains, contractors, or individual Soldiers. They struggle to find opportunities to forward art pieces to safer permanent bases in places like Kuwait, Jordan, or even Iraq that might offer safer destinations for the art’s temporary storage.
I don’t think we would have had much of a problem finding a home for these works either. For example, any number of military museums could have served as suitable permanent homes for Drasutis’ mural, given their focus on preserving military history and artwork created by soldiers. No doubt there will be future wars American Servicemembers will be asked to fight and because of that it is imperative that the military recognizes the importance of documenting and protecting these powerful visual narratives and flashes of expressions which, arguably, are some of the purest forms of art. They are pure forms of expression because they are so often created in the moment and done neither for wealth or critical acclaim. Thus, capturing this art and graffiti will contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the human experience as it is lived in this and future conflicts. In the near term, it can help the public understand the Global War on Terror.
Through concerted efforts and collaborations with various institutions and individuals, we can ensure that the artistic expressions of soldiers like Pete Drasutis endure, immortalizing their contributions to history and offering future generations invaluable insights into the realities of war.
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- Bunker Bros Podcast Episode 5: War Murals (MAR2024)