Cpl Hans Heinrich Helweg

Hans Helweg enlisted in the US Army in 1942 and, initially, served in the Ski Troops at Camp Hale, Colorado. A commercial artist by profession, he became a war artist in the US Air Transport Command later in the war.

Hans Heinrich Helweg was born on 21 February 1917 in Copenhagen, the son of Jakob Heinrich Helweg and Mary Augusta Pilgaard Helweg (née Jessen).^[1] The family moved to London in 1918, because his father became a lecturer in Danish at University College London.

Helweg attended the Byron House School, an independent preparatory school in Highgate, London, and he later moved to the King Alfred's School in Hamstead. At the age of 15, he worked a year at a farm in Denmark, before returning to London and to the Hornsey School of Art (then the Heatherley School of Art) and after that he went to Norway to Norway to study at the Royal Academy in Oslo.^[2] At the time, when war broke out in Europe, Helweg travelled from Gothenburg, Sweden, on-board the SS Kungsholm,^[3] arriving in New York on 11 September 1939.^[4]

From Mountain Trooper to War Artist

Helweg enlisted in the US Army on 26 September 1942 at Fort Jay Governors Island, New York (32512579). He was by then a commercial artist by profession.^[5]

He was promoted to Corporal and posted to the Ski Troops at Camp Hale, Colorado, but fell ill with double pneumonia and scarlet fever while there, and was hopitalised for six months. He was transferred to the jungle troops on release, but he became attached to the Air Transport Command as a war artist. In this capacity he captured the work of the Air Transport Command in paintings and drawings for magazines for publicity purposes.^[6]

He was naturalised as a US Citizen in 1943 in Colorado.^[6]

After the War

Helweg married the British actress Jane Barret (née Catherine Mary Cracknell) in 1947.^[7] He worked as an illustrator in the United States and, from 1950, in the United Kingdom after the war.

Endnotes

[1] DNA: Parish register, Solbjerg Sogn.

[2] Hans Helweg, https://www.tikit.net/HansHelweg/HansHelweg.htm (accessed on 14 August 2021).

[3] Ancestry: Sweden, Emigration Registers, 1869-1948.

[4] Ancestry: New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957.

[5] Ancestry: U.S., World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938-1946.

[6] Hans Helweg, https://www.tikit.net/HansHelweg/HansHelweg.htm (accessed on 14 August 2021).

[7] Ancestry: U.S., Departing Passenger and Crew Lists, 1914-1966.