Dwight Clark Shepler received a commission in the Navy's officer-artist program and soon saw combat in the South Pacific, initially from on board San Juan (CL 54) at the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands and then at Guadalcanal. In 1943, he went to England and in 1944 joined Emmons for the Normandy invasion, going ashore 11 June. With events fresh in his mind and captured on film, he went home to Massachusetts to prepare more detailed paintings, then returned to the Pacific. Embarked in destroyer Flusser, he observed the landings at Ormoc Bay and Lingayen Gulf and, from a PT boat, operations at Corregidor and Bataan. Again at home to finish the last of his more than 300 paintings plus two large murals for the U.S. Naval Academy, he retired from active duty with the rank of commander and was awarded the Bronze Star.
