The painting above, one of the definitive images of the Great War, was painted by John Nash. 'Over the Top' shows the 1st Artists' Rifles in a doomed attack at Marcoing on the 30th December, 1917 – an attack in which Nash himself took part, and of which he was one of only 12 survivors, out of a company of 80. The action was part of a vain attempt to stave off a German counterattack that had already regained most of the land recently taken by the British south of Cambrai. The action at Marcoing was a hasty, ill prepared assault, in broad daylight and without artillery support. 'It was in fact pure murder,' Nash later recalled, 'and I was lucky to escape untouched ... It was bitter cold and we were easy targets against the snow and in daylight ... I think the vivid memory of the occasion helped me when I painted the picture and provoked whatever intensity of feeling may be found in it.' A fellow survivor of the assault described seeing Nash afterwards, 'badly shaken and blackened all over with explosive'. He went on leave soon after, and returned as an official War Artist – which he also was in the Second World War.
Nash, with the encouragement of his brother Paul – who was to become the more successful and fashionable of the two – had decided to become an artist without going through the usual formal training. He was already having some success when he enlisted as a private in the Artists' Rifles in September, 1916 (by which time, according to Nash, there were no other artists serving in the regiment). The first picture he painted that did not take the war as its subject was 'The Cornfield' (1918) – and that became as potent an image of the English pastoral as 'Over the Top' was of the horror of trench warfare.
John Nash was born on this day in 1893.
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