That’s what I read when I learned this morning that the United States Marine Corps has an artist in its ranks, a painter deployed to capture combat scenes.  “We have somebody who was there who can tell the story,” according to Col. Robert Oltman, USMC, referring to Sgt. Kristopher J. Battles, the lone remaining Marine combat artist.

Why not photography?  I’ll let the New York Times answer that one.

“If you and I are in the same firefight, what you see and what I see are two different things, based on our own background and experience,” said Lt. Gen. Ron Christmas, retired, the president and chief executive of the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation. “When a photograph is taken of a battle or any type of scene in combat, you see the image. But what the artist does is he takes that image and interprets it.”

And, of course, capturing a moment in a painting also serves one of art’s most ancient purposes. “It’s the pact we make with the warrior: You will live forever and we will remember you,” Ms. [Anita] Blair [, chief strategist at the National Security Professional Development Integration Office and a former acting assistant secretary of the Navy]. “And to me the best way to do that is through art. We can’t give him his life, but we can give him that immortality.”

In other words, there’s an artist, gemba, sketchpad in hand, genchi genbutsu. Faithful, always.