In 1917, while still in art school, Edward Shenton joined Company B, 103rd Engineers of the Pennsylvania National Guard. He stocked up on art materials, including many canvas-bound sketchbooks and a watercolor set, and went off to train and fight. Corporal Shenton was a combat engineer first and an artist second. He could dig a trench, build a bridge or kill a man with a bayonet, and that was his job, but in his time-off he drew the scenes around him. Whether it was an American ambulance, the cootie-filled shed where he was billeted, a destroyed town or the bodies of dead soldiers, they...