His illustrations brought solace to thousands of Australian women as they waited out the Second World War back home.
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By the end of the war, Consolidated Press correspondent William Edwin Pidgeon, known as WEP, was a household name, famous for his dispatches from Darwin, New Guinea, Borneo and Morotai from 1942-1945.
Many of his illustrations also graced the cover of The Australian Women's Weekly during those years, giving a whimsical and much-needed sense of immediacy for readers, many of whom had husbands, sons and brothers at war.
The Australian War Memorial has just acquired a large collection of paintings, sketches, drawings, photographs and illustrated letters from Pidgeon's private collection, which give a unique perspective on life for the Australian troops during the war.
The collection was donated to the memorial by Pidgeon's family as part of the Cultural Gifts program.
Curator Claire Baddeley said the collection, while complementing the memorial's collection of his official illustrations, shed a different light on the experiences of the Australian troops.
"These works really present a different perspective of Australia's involvement in those regions compared to, say, for example, the work of official war artists," she said.
"The thing that's evident with these, because he was actually - the contemporary jargon would be 'embedded' - with the Australians, he just observed and saw everything that was going on around them, from the perspective of their day-to-day activities."
His sketches, scribbles, paintings and studies show soldiers cooking, going to church, attending race meetings or having "smokos" - essential parts of everyday life that were not documented by official war artists.
"He's showing a different side to war. I think the thing with these is, because he was a cartoonist and illustrator as well, what comes through quite strongly is a sense of humour about the Australian troops and what they're doing, which was quite common at the time, but he's not glorifying them in any way, he's showing them warts and all," Ms Baddeley said.
His illustrations, too, performed an important service for readers back home in Australia, and would eventually lead to his fame as an artist; after the war, he won the Archibald Prize three times.
But during the war, Pidgeon also wrote daily letters to his wife, Jess, and many are in the collection.
Ms Baddeley said the letters were humorous, tender and filled with whimsical drawings and anecdotes, but also remarkably honest about his experiences of war.
She said the memorial planned to stage an exhibition of works by Pidgeon next year.