By Sears Eldredge

Sometime after “A Force” deployed to Burma, two wash sketches of the leading members of concert party were drawn by Murray Griffin.

Identifications: Top row left, Capt. Val Mack; top right, Sgt. Fraser;^[1] 2^nd row left, John Wood; right, Jack Smith; bottom row left Frank Wood; right, Jack Geoghegan.

Identifications: Top row left, Doug Peart; top right, Slim De Grey; Middle row left, Fred Brightfield; center, John Wood^[2]; right, Doug Mathers; Bottom row left, Eric Beattie; center, Harry Smith; right, unidentified.^[3]

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[1] Sgt. Fraser was not a performer in the concert party. He was most likely Val Mack’s administrative assistant.

[2] Why John Wood was drawn twice is not known.

[3] For some reason, Jack Boardman and other musicians were not included in these sketches.

Note that all the documents in this series of blogs reside in Sears A. Eldredge Archive in the De Witt Wallace Library at Macalester College, 1600 Grand Avenue, St. Paul, Minnesota, 55105

Sear’s book, Captive Audiences/Captive Performers: Music and Theatre as Strategies for Survival on the Thailand-Burma Railway 1942-1945, was published by Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota in 2014, as an open-access e-book and is available here: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/thdabooks/22