Okanagan Military Museum showcases wartime trench art

Those who live during times of war, can be made poignantly aware of the beauty of the world.

Since the Napoleonic wars, ‘Trench art’ has been made by soldiers and civilians alike, but during the First World War, the practice flourished.

“Trench art is a pretty broad term,” Keith Boehmer the military history interpreter at the Okanagan Military Museum told Kelowna10. “It encompasses souvenirs, things that were modified, things that were salvaged, usually by someone serving at the front-line areas.”

These pieces were typically crafted from whatever the soldier could obtain: commonly salvaged brass like spent artillery shells or cap badges.

Lots of these would have a secondary use; two of the brass pieces showcased were likely tobacco tins or ashtrays.

But Boehmer said the main purpose these art pieces served was symbolic.

“Young men were using items like these to mark the occasion of what they experienced and where they went,” he explained. “It would showcase what sort of pride they had in their units, while occupying their minds and keeping their morale up.”

One of the pieces displayed featured the cap badge of a machine gun core, while another marks the capture of Vimy Ridge by Canadian troops.

Convalescence and commemorative art are very similarly related; while soldiers were in training or recovering from injuries, they would create a piece of art to bide their time while they recovered or to mark their training.

Boehmer highlighted a piece from Corporal W.C. Moore, a member of a London Rifle Brigade who was recovering from a German mustard gas attack. While he was recuperating in a military hospital in Kent, he had hand sewn an embroidery of the brigade’s insignia.

Items like these and others can be explored at the Okanagan Military Museum’s open house on Remembrance Day.