The painter and illustrator Griswold Tyng had been one of many artists hired by the U.S. government’s Division of Pictorial Publicity to design posters during World War I, mainly promoting war bonds. His conventional, figurative style was put to appropriate use in this 1931 poster announcing a forthcoming convention of the American Legion in Detroit. Above the military veterans shown marching in the lower part of the image, he describes the shadowy figures of American “doughboys” of World War I as they advance across the barbed wire of the trenches with biplanes above and the American flag as a backdrop. According to a report at the time in the Detroit Free Press, around one million people ultimately watched for hours as the veterans of that war and even the Civil War walked in the parade.