The first time Walter Brightwell saw the ocean he was 22 years old and had just arrived in Florida to visit a friend in Palm Beach. The second time, he was one year older and on board the ocean liner Queen Mary with 10,000 other GIs as they steamed toward war-torn Europe.
“Once I got over my seasickness, I knew I would always love the sea,” says Brightwell, today one of the nation’s top marine painters. “In an odd way, it reminded me of the endless horizons of Texas, where I had grown up.”
After his arrival in England, Brightwell spent more time on the ocean than many people do in a lifetime. In 1942, he was aboard an armada of 800 ships that carried hundreds of thousands of American troops to North Africa, where they would hand the Allies their first great victory of World War II.
Read the entire article in the January 1999 issue
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