Sgt. Keith Elliot VC. 22nd Btn.
Conté crayon
26 x 19.5 cm
Signed lower right
PROVENANCE
Neville Colvin Collection. England
EXHIBITED
Jonathan Grant Galleries, Peter McIntyre 2nd NZEF War Drawings 1941 - 1944, 2010
ILLUSTRATED
(2010) Peter McIntyre 2nd NZEF War Drawings 1941 - 1944 [Exhibition Catalogue]. Auckland, New Zealand: Jonathan Grant Galleries.
Lieutenant Keith Elliott, VC
Keith Elliott was born in Apiti, in the Manawatu in 1916. After attending Feilding Agricultural High School, he farmed and played provincial rugby for Bush. He began farm work in 1933, and in 1935 he became manager of a 96-acre family farm near Pahiatua.
When World War II broke out he immediately joined the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, and left New Zealand on 1 May 1940 with the 2nd Echelon as a private in the 22nd Battalion. He served in the Middle East and took part in the fighting in Greece and Crete. Following the evacuation from Crete, he fought in the North African campaign and was made a Sergeant. At various times during the desert campaigns in North Africa he was wounded, captured, freed and continued to fight.
On 15 July 1942, when he was 26 years old, Sergeant Elliott’s battalion was attacked by German tanks at Ruweisat, Western Desert in Egypt. He was wounded in the chest while leading his platoon in an attack under heavy machine gun and mortar fire, but he carried on and led his men in a bayonet charge which resulted in the capture of four enemy machine-gun posts and an anti-tank gun. Seven of the enemy were killed and 50 taken prisoner. Although he was wounded four times Sergeant Elliott refused to leave his platoon until he had reformed them and handed over the prisoners, the number of which had by then increased to 130.
Elliott was awarded a Victoria Cross for these actions and shortly after was commissioned in the field. Since Victoria Cross holders were considered good for morale back home, Elliott, in spite of his protests, was returned to New Zealandin July 1943, where he was welcomed with great acclaim in the Pahiatua area.
Elliott was discharged in December 1943, and resumed farming. In February of the following year he married Margaret Markham, and the couple would have five children.
In 1947 was ordained a minister in the Anglican Church, encouraged by Michael Underhill, a former army chaplain. He served as Vicar in a number of parishes including service as a chaplain of military training conscripts, as well as working for many years in the Maori Mission before moving to Wellington as the Assistant City Missioner and later as Welfare Officer for the Fire Service.
After a lifetime of committed service in both the military and the Church, Keith Elliott died in 1989, at Wellington, aged 73, survived by his wife and children.
His Victoria Cross was displayed at the QEII Army Memorial Museum at Waiouru, New Zealand. On Sunday 2 December 2007 it was one of nine Victoria Crosses that were among a hundred medals stolen from the museum. On 16 February 2008 New Zealand Police announced all the medals had been recovered as a result of a NZ$300,000 reward offered by Lord Ashcroft and Tom Sturgess.
The Neville Colvin Collection
(New Zealand 1918 – 1991 Britain)
Known to his friends as ‘the Count’ for his distinctive features, and to thousands as the creator of ‘Clueless’, Neville Maurice Colvin was born and raised in Dunedin. The first expressions of his drawing talent included contributions to the Otago Boys’ High School annual magazine. With the onset of World War II, training to be a teacher was replaced with commando training in Australia. Colvin arrived in Egypt in October 1941 and worked as a draughtsman with one of the infantry brigades of the 2nd New Zealand Division at Maadi. In his spare time he began contributing drawings to the New Zealand Expeditionary Forces Times.
In 1942 Private Colvin joined H.Q. 5th Brigade at the city of El Alamein, Northern Egypt. He cursed the bugs, the sun, the sand, the brass hats and all the other targets of an irritated soldier, yet from his hole in the ground he still managed to produce witty and humorous sketches for the N.Z.E.F. Times. To procure a chuckle out of 40,000 disillusioned soldiers was undoubtedly a milestone in the artist’s fledgling career. Towards the end of the Second Battle of Alamein he was hit in the leg, during a sudden airfield attack by nine fighter-bombers. He saw the campaign out with the Division and returned to Maadi in May 1943. He was then seconded to the Public Relations Service as a draughtsman.
Lance-Corporal Colvin proceeded to Italy with the PRS in early 1944, setting up headquarters in the port of Bari. By now he was one of the best-known artist contributors to the N.Z.E.F. Times. Here, he drew the original ‘Clueless’, the quintessential medal-bedecked, worn out and befuddled veteran. In early 1945 the nincompoop was released to the troops; he was an instant hit. The name quickly became a sobriquet for the gullible half-wit or unreliable vehicle in every unit, and for brigadiers and batmen, colonels and corporals alike his tomfooleries became a rare, weekly thrill. As The Jayforce Times wrote in 1947: “…even the normally staid, the meticulously military, were known to unbend.” Undoubtedly, it was Colvin’s regular interaction with the men in the Division and his past experiences at Alamein that saw him always hit the comic mark.
In 1945 Sergeant Colvin returned to New Zealand and decided to continue doing that which had given him so much satisfaction while abroad. From 1946 to the mid-1950s he was a political cartoonist for The Evening Post in Wellington. Then, following the trend of other antipodean graphic artists Colvin ventured to London. After working for The Daily Sketch and freelancing for major newspapers such as The News Chronicle and The Daily Telegraph, he turned to focus on strip cartooning. His best-known strip was the Evening Standard’s ‘Modesty Blaise’ by Peter O’Donnell, which he drew from 1977 – 1986. A lampoon on ‘James Bond’, the strip was run by in 44 countries, and in total he drew 1,902 episodes. Many reprints and several film adaptations have been made of this popular comic.
Neville Colvin’s flair for capturing the essence of topical situations and the idiosyncrasies of his subjects with a distinctively bold line and minimal use of text makes him deserving of placement in the annals of not only New Zealand’s art history, but that of Britain, where during his lifetime he was considered her pre-eminent line artist. The drawings in this exhibition, produced during the WWII years, are especially meaningful. Not only did they succeed in making light out of arduous times and bringing rare merriment to our hardworking troops, but in producing them Colvin realised where his passion lay, leading to his valuable contributions to the world of cartoon and illustration on an international scale.
Author: Dr. Warren Feeney
