A Century Of Talbot House, Poperinghe
Talbot House is a Belgian town house located in the town of Poperinghe in rural Flanders. Here in December 1915 two army chaplains, Rev. P.S.B. ‘Tubby’ Clayton and Rev. Neville Talbot, opened the house in memory of Neville’s brother, Lieutenant Gilbert Talbot, who had been killed at Hooge in July 1915. The idea was to create a place soldiers could come to, to escape the war. There was a quiet room, a library, a theatre, a place to get tea and in the loft a chapel where men could attend religious services. During the war thousands of British troops knew Talbot House, but in 1919 its former owner claimed it back until the house was acquired for the Talbot House Association in the 1920s. Talbot House was where the Toc H movement was started: Toc H is army signalling phonetic for the initials T.H. = Talbot House.
This image comes from a postcard soldiers could buy at the house during the war to help raise money for the house so that everything could be free for ordinary soldiers. It shows the ‘upper room’ where the services took place. A century after Talbot House first opened this view, and this chapel, is almost unchanged. It is one of the places on the Western Front where you can reach out and almost touch the Great War.
ANZAC: An Original Digger
Charles Hedley Wood joined the Australian Imperial Force aged 19 in August 1914: one of the first to enlist, it appears that actually he may have lied about his age and was only 16 in 1914 – he certainly looks very young in the photo.
A century ago today he landed in the second wave at ANZAC with the 6th Battalion AIF and fought with them in the trenches above the beaches until he was wounded on 8th May 1915. That brought his war to an end; he was subsequently discharged but he was certainly alive fifty years after Gallipoli to claim his ANZAC medal in the 1960s.
Today we remember the original Diggers like him who were part of Australia’s baptism of fire in the Great War and at the dawn of their country coming of age a hundred years ago today.
ANZAC: The Canterbury Regiment Originals
For many today is ANZAC Day as well as the centenary of the Gallipoli landings but it is all too easy to forget the NZ in ANZAC.
The New Zealand Expeditionary Force was part of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps and it’s units landed alongside the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) battalions at what would be known as ANZAC Cove a century ago today.
This image shows original volunteers of the Canterbury Regiment in New Zealand in 1914. The regiment took part in the landings a century ago today as described in their regimental history:
The first troops of the New Zealand Brigade to land were the Auckland Battalion, at noon, and the Headquarters and 1st and 2nd Companies of the Canterbury Battalion, at 12.30 p.m. These were immediately ordered to reinforce the left flank of the 3rd Australian Brigade, and to fill the gap between that flank and the sea. While the order was in process of being carried out, the two Canterbury Companies became separated on Plugge’s Plateau, a quarter of a mile east of the beach. There was great confusion, as the men of the various companies had not only become mixed with one another, but in some cases had attached themselves to the Auckland and various Australian Battalions; while Aucklanders and Australians were picked up by the officers commanding the various Canterbury parties.
Lieutenant-Colonel Stewart with the 2nd Company got well forward, and took up a position on the upper portion of Walker’s Ridge, which ran north-east from near Pope’s Hill down to the sea. They immediately became involved in heavy fighting, and Lieutenant-Colonel Stewart, going back to bring up reinforcements, collected a large party of Australians, and was killed while exposing himself in leading them up to the firing line. There the 2nd Company and the Australian reinforcements repulsed with the bayonet three Turkish attacks, and then withdrew slightly to more suitable ground, where they dug in.
These men were among those who paved the trail of New Zealand immortality and legend a century ago: we must always remember the NZ in ANZAC.
The French at Gallipoli 1915
Today on the centenary of the landings at Gallipoli much focus will be on the Australian and New Zealand troops who landed there in April 1915. One of the forgotten combatants of the campaign French soldiers who served alongside their British and Commonwealth comrades.
Some 80,000 French soldiers fought at Gallipoli as part of the Corps expéditionnaire d’Orient with almost 27,000 casualties. Many of the French troops were from Colonial units drawn from the far corners of the French Empire. This image comes from a French source and depicts a French Zouave in the trenches at Gallipoli in 1915 from the 17e division d’infanterie coloniale who took part in the fighting at Krithia.
Gallipoli Remembered: 1915-2015
Today is the centenary of the landings at Gallipoli: on 25th April 1915 British and French troops landed at Cape Helles and Australian and New Zealand troops of ANZAC landed further up the coast on what would be called ANZAC cove.
This morning on Great War Photos I will be posting a number of Gallipoli related images starting with this image showing troops at ANZAC sometime in the campaign. It was taken by a French officer who had been serving with the French forces at Helles. British troops, who served here later in the operations, are visible as well as Indian Army and Naval personnel from the Royal Navy vessels that supported the landings here.
Neuve-Chapelle Indian Memorial
Today is the centenary of the Battle of Neuve-Chapelle, the first major British assault of the Great War. It was not the first attack on the German lines as the trench war had begun in late 1914 and in December there had been several localised attacks. But these had been small scale affairs compared to Neuve-Chapelle which saw more than 40,000 British and Indian troops make a major assault on the village. The Indian Army had taken part in First Ypres and much of the fighting in late 1914 but with the Indian Corps now accounting for a sizeable part of the British Expeditionary Force in France and Flanders this was one of their major battles of the Great War on the Western Front.
Indian Troops 1915
The Neuve-Chapelle Indian Memorial was designed by Sir Hubert Baker and unveiled in October 1927. It commemorates more than 4,700 Indian troops who fell in France who have no known grave and today, one hundred years on from the battle, it will be the seen of commemorations largely by the Indian community who are rightly using the WW1 Centenary to ensure the deeds and sacrifice of the Indian Corps is not forgotten.
Winter War: Snow On The Wire in No Man’s Land
This extraordinary image shows an early war German position on the Western Front during the winter of 1914/15 – so exactly a hundred years ago. Little damage from shell fire is visible, but on the left in the trees the head of a German soldier peaks out from above his trench and to his right there also appears to be a periscope. This would mean the image would have to have been taken in No Man’s Land, which makes it even more unusual as the enemy would have to have been to the rear of the photographer.
A close inspection of the barbed wire shows it covered with snow; glistening in the winter sunshine. The old world had ended; man had made a new world on the Western Front which grow even more terribly as the next twelve months evolved.
Winter War: Snow In The Trenches
It is that time of year again and thoughts of the Old Front Line during the winter months of the Great War come to mind.
This image is from a German source and shows a well constructed trench in Eastern France, possibly the Vosges during the early period of the war. There are little signs of damage, which would indicate a second or third line position and while there is a man on sentry duty in the background, it is unlikely the enemy is very close. What is always amazing when viewing images like this is the thought that men lived in positions like this on a daily basis come sun, rain, or as in this case – snow.
Remembering Gallipoli 2014
On this day 99 years ago the Gallipoli landings began at Cape Helles and what would later be described as ANZAC Cove. Across Australia and New Zealand today many families will be remembering, and there will be dawn services in Gallipoli itself and at Villers-Bretonneux in France. Thousands of ANZAC descendants will be there on this, ANZAC Day.
In Britain Gallipoli is not seen as significant compared to how it is viewed down under, and even less remembered in France, although more French troops fought in the campaign than Australians.
Gallipoli will always be personal to me as my paternal grandfather took part in the landings at W Beach – ‘Lancashire Landing‘ – two great uncles were in the campaign, one of them being killed at Krithia, and my maternal grandfather worked on the cemeteries there with the British Army in the 1920s.
While war poetry is not for everyone, this is what I shall be thinking of today, as well as the times I too have slept by that shore and walked those bluffs above the beaches.
The guns were silent, and the silent hills
had bowed their grasses to a gentle breeze
I gazed upon the vales and on the rills,
And whispered, “What of these?’ and “What of these?
These long forgotten dead with sunken graves,
Some crossless, with unwritten memories
Their only mourners are the moaning waves,
Their only minstrels are the singing trees
And thus I mused and sorrowed wistfullyI watched the place where they had scaled the height,
The height whereon they bled so bitterly
Throughout each day and through each blistered night
I sat there long, and listened – all things listened too
I heard the epics of a thousand trees,
A thousand waves I heard; and then I knew
The waves were very old, the trees were wise:
The dead would be remembered evermore-
The valiant dead that gazed upon the skies,
And slept in great battalions by the shore.The Last to Leave by Leon Gellert
A German Christmas On The Western Front
This image dates from 1915 and shows German troops at their winter billet ‘somewhere in France’ well prepared for their Christmas away from home. The tree is decorated, one soldier plays on the piano and Christmas gifts are laid out on the table. A snapshot of some normality in what for them was no doubt usually far from normal circumstances.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from Great War Photos.
Winter War: Winter In The Trenches
As Christmas approaches thoughts turn to trench life on the Western Front during the Great War. This image dates from a small private collection relating to the 1/13th Battalion London Regiment (Kensingtons) and was taken in France near Fleurbaix during the winter of 1914/15. The men are dressed informally as was typical of that early period of the conflict and aside from a great deal of personal kit being worn to keep the cold out, the man on the left has a typical goat/sheep-skin jerkin of this first winter. At least the rum ration is close at hand! The fact that the men are standing up and the parapet of the positions behind is low, would indicate this was in a reserve trench some distance from the actual front line.
Unseen Gallipoli Images
The Gallipoli campaign has long fascinated me as my grandfather and two great uncles fought there and I have made many trips to those haunting and fascinating battlefields where the campaign was fought. From a photographic point of view Gallipoli took place in a period of the war when there were no official photographers; what images we have of it were taken by press correspondents or by soldiers who took illicit cameras with them.
I was pleased therefore to acquire a series of previously unseen images taken during the campaign in 1915 showing locations in and around the British sector at Cape Helles. There is no clue as to who took them or what they did at Gallipoli, but I have quite a few examples of images put into postcard format dating from the Gallipoli operations.
The image above is taken from in front of the ruins at Seddulbahir and shows the beached SS River Clyde which spearheaded the landings on V Beach on 25th April 1915. This photo appears to have been taken much later in the campaign; the ship remained there until after the war when it was eventually re-floated, renamed and sadly scrapped in the 1950s.
Other images show positions in occupation by troops, which one caption states were from the 42nd (East Lancs) Division, who fought at Gallipoli and suffered heavy losses in the fighting at Krithia. The image above shows the entrance to Gully Ravine, a long gully that ran towards Krithia. At the end shown it in the photo it reached the sea and became a major reserve, communications and billeting area for British troops.
The other images may appear on Great War Photos at a later stage, although I am currently gathering material for a possible publication and maybe even an App – watch this space!
Winter War: Royal Engineer Despatch Rider 1915
The Great War was the first conflict in which motorcycle Despatch Riders played any sort of role in battlefield signals. The Royal Engineers took on the main task of providing them and men were specially trained pre-1914 to operate motorcycles. Those with motorcycle experience were brought in when volunteers flooded in after the outbreak of war to cope with the expansion of the army.
This image shows a motorcycle Despatch Rider in winter dress wearing a standard British Army greatcoat but of the shorter type issued to drivers of vehicles and horse transport. He has leather gloves for a better grip and to keep his hands warm when out on his bike and he has a scarf to protect his neck area. On his head is the first wartime issue cold weather gear for British soldiers, the so-called ‘Gor Blimey’ hat. On it is his pair of Despatch Rider goggles. His Royal Engineer cap badge is visible in the middle. Post war the RE Despatch Riders formed an old comrades association which was active well into the 1960s.
Winter War: French Mountain Troops on Skis, Vosges 1915
This image was taken in the Vosges area, a region known for its severe weather and deep snow in the winter, and a sector of the Western Front in Eastern France where the fighting revolved around mountainous terrain. Here a group of French Alpine Troops are using skis are ‘on patrol’ although the front here was never really that fluid to allow such patrols to take place in the face of enemy positions and this is likely to be a posed image taken behind the French lines. However, it does give an insight into winter conditions in the Vosges in 1915.
Winter War: French Poilu in Winter 1915
This contemporary illustration from La Guerre Documentee shows a typical French Poilu in a front line trench in winter garb. The French soldier was issued with a substantial greatcoat worn over his tunic which did offer some protection from the cold, but as this illustration demonstrates they also had to result to make do and he has a pair of woollen gloves and a scarf to help make long periods in the front line during the winter at least bearable. The artist, Guy Arnoux, was a well known French illustrator of the period whose work appeared in many magazines and children’s books
Winter War: Snowy Trench in the Argonne 1915
The Argonne Forest lies between the battlefields of the Champagne east of Reims and the ground at Verdun. The fighting here in 1914 established the lines around the forested area of the Argonne, where it would remain for much of the rest of the war. Still a forested area, it contains to this day much evidence of the war with trench lines still visible in many places.
This German image dates from the winter of 1915/16 and shows a well constructed trench in the Argonne Forest, where a lone German officer looks out across the snow. The lack of damage and the fact that he has no problem about popping his head above the parapet would indicate this was a reserve trench line, some distance back from the actual battlefield. Much of these reserve lines in the Argonne were finally taken by American troops in the final battles of the autumn of 1918.
Winter War: Fritz Dressed For Winter 1915
The Winter War post yesterday looked at the uniform and kit worn by British troops during winter periods on the Western Front.
This image, dating from 1915, shows a group of German soldiers dressed in their version of the make-do gear to keep them warm during a winter in the trenches. The sturdy coats are leather with a fur liner, again likely to be sheep or goat fur like the British version but a more complex garment and perhaps a little better? The coats have a fur collar and two of the German soldiers have beards, something British soldiers were not allowed to have, even during the winter. It certainly makes an interesting comparison to the sort of kit available to those on the other side of No Man’s Land.
Winter War: Snow in the Vosges 1915
As winter officially began this week it is an apt period to be looking at winter on the battlefields of the Great War and all this month the site will feature images relating to the winter period during WW1.
We start with a German image of the Vosges mountains in the snow sometime in 1915. The Vosges was the end of the Western Front, an area of occasionally heavy fighting but largely characterised by long periods of static attritional trench warfare. Being in Eastern France it was also the colder end of the front where during the winter temperatures regularly dropped substantially below zero. While the landscape in the snow might look attractive, and this also appears like a tourist photo, the reality is that men had to live in holes in the ground on battlefields like this during the winter period. The Great War generation was tough but even they struggled to cope in landscapes frozen solid and covered with deep snow.
Forgotten Fronts: War Horses on the Eastern Front 1915
The Eastern Front in the Great War is something few are aware of; the Eastern Front of a generation later in Hitler’s war has eclipsed it and the fact that at any given time more than a million German soldiers faced potentially millions of Russian troops, both deadlocked in the East in the same way there was deadlock in the West. The Eastern Front became a mirror of France and Flanders in some ways; trenches, No Man’s Land, barbed wire, shelling and attrition. Joined by troops of the Austro-Hungarian Empire more than 800,000 Germans died in the East along with 1.15 million Austro-Hungarians; opposite them more than 2.2 million Russians died before the Russian Revolution changed everything.
This photograph comes from a collection of a young German gunner who served on the Eastern Front between 1914 and 1917, before he moved to France where he died in 1918. Here two German war horses are pulling a transport wagon used to carry material, food and other equipment for the artillery regiment he served with. In both World Wars horses were the only reliable transport in the often awful conditions on the Eastern Front: extremities of cold and rain which turned the roads and battlefield into a quagmire, and often caused more casualties from the elements than the enemy. Thousands of horses died on the Eastern Front, forgotten animals on a forgotten front.
WW1 Landmarks: Mont St Eloi, Arras
The abbey of Mont St Eloi is located on a ridge north of the city of Arras. An abbey was first built here in the seventh century but the buildings that became a landmark on the Arras front date from the eighteenth century. Fighting raged around St Eloi in 1914 and 1915, as the French advanced on the nearby Notre Dame de Lorette and Vimy Ridge. Shells damaged the main towers and much of the main abbey building.
Abbey of Mont St Eloi in 1915 (author)
When the British came to Arras in 1916 they established billets in Mont St Eloi, medical facilities, gun sites and a Royal Flying Corps aerodrome beneath the twin towers of the abbey. Thousands of troops were here in the lead-up to the Battle of Arras in April 1917 and again when the fighting returning in 1918. It was even said that a pilot flew between the towers in 1918! To many who served on the Arras front, it was very much a local landmark.
Today the towers of Mont St Eloi are a protected French national monument and very much part of local tourism in the Pas de Calais.
CEF: Canada’s Army Expands 1915
Following the dispatch of the 1st Canadian Division to Britain in 1914, thousands of men of military age living in Canada flocked to enlist in the opening months of the war. These recruits were used to form further battalions of the CEF and within a year three full infantry divisions were created, with room for more expansion as the war continued. In total more than 260 infantry battalions were formed by the end of the conflict.
Not every Canadian battalion could go overseas, however. These are men of the 76th Battalion Canadian Infantry. Formed at Niagara Camp in the summer of 1915, the unit trained for war service and then disbanded in 1916 when its personnel were absorbed by the 36th Battalion which was by then in Britain. The 36th did not serve outside of Britain, it’s personnel being posted to battalions of the CEF on the Western Front. It was therefore common for men in the CEF to serve in several units before they got to an ‘active’ one on the battlefield.
The 76th Bn CEF in training 1915.
CEF: The Canadian Expeditionary Force 1914
The Canadian Army was small prior to the Great War, but it had a large Militia – equivalent to our Territorials. Canada’s response in 1914 to Britain declaring war on Germany was immediate and a decision was made to create a Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) with many of the original units having a nucleus of men from the pre-war militia. Within weeks a Canadian Division was ready for overseas service and it’s units dispatched to England where they assembled for eventual service in France and Flanders. Of the men who served in this original CEF, some 70% were born in the United Kingdom.
This group of CEF originals are from the 1st Canadian Brigade Canadian Engineers, part of the 1st Canadian Division. They are photographed in camp on Salisbury Plain where the CEF was in final training to be sent overseas. Within a few months these men were in the trenches in Flanders and in April 1915 they would be heavily involved in the Second Battle of Ypres, when poison gas was used for the first time.
Gallipoli: Catapult Gun In The Trenches 1915
This image is from the autumn of 1915 and shows men of the 2/4th Battalion London Regiment (Royal Fusiliers), then part of the Royal Naval Division, in the front line trenches at Gallipoli. This weapon these Territorial soldiers are employing is typical of the makeshift weapons being used not only in the trenches of Gallipoli but the whole Western Front in France and Flanders.
Catapult guns were employed from 1915 to allow soldiers to fire hand grenades or small explosive charges (often contained in jam tins) over much greater distances than they could throw them, or more often fire them from positions of safety as seen here. The weapon could be set up and loaded, then fired at the enemy positions. In most cases the sort of distance they were firing projectiles was only measured in tens of yards, which was also typical of conditions on the battlefield in 1915 when both sides often lived almost on top of each other. In this photo the officer on the left has a grenade in his right hand about to load it while the Private on the right has the contraption used to tighten the catapult. In his other hand is a box periscope, no doubt used to observe the enemy targets safely before firing.
The 2/4th Londons stayed at Gallipoli until evacuated in late 1915 and then went to Egypt where they were disbanded, most personnel going to France to join a re-formed 1/4th Battalion which would go on to fight on the Somme.
Loos 1915: Tower Bridge – A Symbol of Loos
The area around Loos was one of France’s richest coal mining districts and the landscape was populated with mining communities and old pit heads. Arguably the most famous was the so-called ‘Tower Bridge‘, a massive pit head lift which stood to the rear of Loos village and which reminded those who saw it of the original Tower Bridge in London. Loos itself sat in a hollow but the top of Tower Bridge could be seen from the British trenches before the battle and it soon became a landmark. Men from the 15th (Scottish) Division took the village on 25th September 1915 and just as the Germans had used it as an Observation Post, British gunners soon did the same until it was eventually destroyed. Many of the men who served at Loos acquired postcards of Tower Bridge in towns like Bethune, and kept them or sent them home to family. Images of it appeared in the popular press of the day.
By 1918 there was little left of Tower Bridge but it was rebuilt post-war. The mining industry in Northern France pretty much collapsed in the 1960s/70s and the pit which the new Tower Bridge served closed. The image below was taken by WW1 author John Giles in the 70s showing the building before it was demolished once more. Today only a few traces exist of Tower Bridge, now tucked away between houses and a small park.
Great War Photos 