This is an earlier work depicting an Elefant caught in a flooded field some where in Italy. An American GI and come alone and "tagged" it with the ubiquitous graffiti "Kilory Was Here". The cartoon and phrase was scribbled by GIs in every place where they served. It is believed the origins lie with a shipyard inspector named James Kilory who wrote "Kilory was here" after completing an inspection to show it had been done.
The only real note to be made about the model is the water was made with a polyester resin. It works very well, but produces terrible fumes and will dissolve paint and styrofoam so anything it touches needs to be sealed.