In June, 1943, upon completion of his freshman year of art school at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Philip Pearlstein was drafted into the U.S. Army and sent to Alabama for basic training. Given his artistic background, he was subsequently assigned to the visual-aids shop which was charged with producing charts, map keys, and manuals for use by army personnel. Pearlstein would learn various commercial art skills, silk-screening, and printing techniques in this work, and he would use his spare time both in the U.S. and after his transfer overseas to make sketches and watercolors of everyday army life.