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 Douglas Burtell -- A GI's War
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 A G.I.'s War
as sketched by
Douglas Burtell, 164th Infantry,
Americal Division, 1941-1945
Douglas Burtell was born in 1924, in Casselton. He grew up in Casselton during the hardest years of the Great Depression, going to school and doing odd jobs to help his family. “I wasn’t able to play football at school until my junior year, because [before that] I had to be down at the garage at four o’clock, scrubbing floors, washing cars, greasing cars, driving the wrecker – I didn’t have a driver’s license. I got my social security card when I was fourteen, in 1938. Then when I was fifteen I delivered a truck to a farmer. My dad told me to deliver the truck and ask the farmer for the job of driving it. So I got that job hauling grain for a dollar a day. Later, the farmer fired one of the bundle haulers who got drunk, so then they put me on a bundle wagon and I hauled bundles for a dollar a day. That was hard work, you got up at four or five in the morning, harnessed the horses. I also shoveled the grain into the trucks, the trucks didn’t have hoists. I shoveled lots of grain.” Doug also started drawing when he was young, sketches of his school, his friends, the countryside, just about anything. “I was always drawing.”
"Dogface" -- sketch by Burtell, 1945 |
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Sketches by Burtell in 1941, at the time the North Dakota reported for Federal service. (Next three sketches)
- The headquarters personnel hold reveille outside the J.C. Penny building, Fargo, January 1941. 
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- Sketches of sleeping in the armory and equipment.
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- Standing guard at Camp Claiborne.
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Doug (photo, Jan. 1941) joined the North Dakota National Guard, becoming a member of the Headquarters Company for the 164th regiment. “Some of the guys that were in the guard, like Bernard Starkenberg and others, would come out to Casselton. Some were chasing girls, others had family and friends there. Starkenberg and these guys talked me into joining. I was sixteen years and eight months old. That was in December 1940. When we were sworn in to Federal service in January, that old sergeant stamped out our World War type dog tags with a little stamper and a wooden hammer.”
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When the Guard was nationalized in February 1941, Burtell and his companions went to Camp Claiborne, Louisiana, for Federal training and service as the 164th Infantry Regiment. He and the entire regiment were at Claiborne in December1941 when the attack on Pearl Harbor plunged the United States into war.
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After a quick journey across the Pacific on the SS Coolidge, the regiment landed briefly in Australia and then took smaller ships to New Caledonia, where they trained in jungle warfare for several months.
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In October 1942, the regiment reinforced the Marines on Guadalcanal. Because of his skills in making sketch maps, Doug was assigned to intelligence gathering duties on the island. This meant that he made numerous long-distance patrols into the jungle of Guadalcanal, attempting to find information about the enemies’ whereabouts and intentions, capture Japanese documents and try to take prisoners. Burtell used his artistic talents to make maps for the 164th. |
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Sketch of a firefight with the Japanese
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Burtell served throughout the Guadalcanal campaign, and then fought on the island of Bougainville, where he participated in several patrols into enemy territory and fought in several firefights. He continued to make sketches of his many experiences in the war, and also took photographs that he was able to bring home.
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Burtell's photograph of the famous "million dollar tree,"
a banyan tree that overlooked American lines on Hill 260,
over which the Americans and Japanese fought for more than a week in March 1944. |
Burtell and members of the 164th Reconnaissance platoon, on Bougainville, 1944. Burtell's tent is in the background, but shelters were nearby for protection from bombs dropped by Japanese "intruder" aircraft at night.
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In one of his sketches, made while in the Philippines, he drew two men sleeping in a shallow foxhole. The exhaustion of the soldiers and the care they took to keep weapons near to hand is very evocative of the conditions that foot soldiers had to live with. A second sketch of GIs under fire compares well with the work of combat artists used by the army and to the work of Bill Mauldin.
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In the Philippines, Burtell participated in combat on Leyte and the Negros-Cebu campaign, where he was wounded, but returned to his unit. He managed to take more photographs during these months, and draw more sketches, including one of a patrol from the perspective of the lead scout, the "point man."
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A makeshift shower, rigged with gasoline barrels, on Leyte, in the Philippines. |
When Burtell returned from the Pacific in 1945, he brought home with him a sketch book containing drawings of the Pacific. In the 1990s he was commissioned to adapt one of his sketches for use as the memorial plaque in the veterans’ cemetery in Bismarck.
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In addition, parts of earlier sketches were used in interpretative panels now on US Highway 2 (designated as the “164th Infantry Memorial Highway” by the ND State Legislature in 2005), and a painting by Burtell, depicting the active volcano Mount Bagana on the island of Bougainville, was reproduced. Several 164th members still have copies of it. |
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Today, Burtell lives in Bowman, North Dakota, where he continues to draw, "although these days, it's mostly of the local scenery, outdoors, and the like. I think I've drawn about enough of warfare."
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(Click a link below to listen to a short sound clip for a segment of Doug Burtell's 2008 interview with David Taylor, the editor of the Americal Newsletter. Burtell discusses his experiences while on patrol in the Pacific.
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Last modified date: 3/4/2010 11:55 AM
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