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Simply Amazing Photos of WWI That You May Have Not Seen Before (Bonus: Is That C.S. Lewis?)

Jan. 29, 2013 11:40am Becket Adams

Heres a Collection of Rare Color Photos From One of the Worlds Most Bloody & Savage Conflicts

“Mr. Philip Gibbs, in his vivid account of the final capture of the mill by the British, says that again and again ‘the old windmill beyond the village changed hands. Eight times the Germans who had dislodged our men were cut to pieces or thrust out, and then our men finally held it.’” (Courtesy “The War Illustrated,” 7th July, 1917. Philip Gibbs was een Britse oorlogsjournalist).

Millions of Europe’s best men marched off to the “Great War” in 1914 ready to be home by Christmas — but four years later their graves would make World War I one of the most savage and brutal conflicts known to mankind.

A deadly combination of advanced weaponry (i.e. the machine gun, chemical weapons, field artillery, etc.) and antiquated battlefield tactics resulted in the wholesale slaughter of an entire generation of men in Europe.

Consider the Battle of the Somme: Nobody remembers the six miles of ground won by allied forces. No, the Somme Offensive, which began on July 1, 1916 and ended on November 18, 1916, is remembered primarily for its death toll: 420,000 British, 200,000 French, and 500,000 German soldiers.

That’s 1,120,000 casualties over a 141 day period — all for six miles of land.

But perhaps the greatest tragedy of World War I is the fact that many who fought had no idea what they were fighting for. Unlike its sequel, World War II, the “war to end war” had no tyrant threatening the rights and liberties of the free peoples of Europe. Rather, World War I was sparked by the assassination of a relatively obscure archduke and his wife. International treaties had to be honored and alliances needed to be observed.

The average soldier did not understand this. All he knew was that his county called and he answered.

Dulce et decorum est and all that.

So, without any further introduction, we thought we’d share with you some rare photos (some in color) of people whose lives were touched by “The Great War.”

Noted English author C.S. Lewis:

C. S. Lewis in 1917, left, with friend Earnest Moore during World War I. Moore would later be killed, as were many of Lewis’ friends. (wilsonstation.com)

Although Lewis rarely spoke of his war experiences, he did touch on the subject in his 1955 partial autobiography “Surprised by Joy”:

Through the winter, weariness and water were our chief enemies. I have gone to sleep marching and woken again and found myself marching still. One walked in the trenches in thigh gum boots with water above the knee; one remembers the icy stream welling up inside the boot when you punctured it on concealed barbed wire.

Familiarity both with the very old and the very recent dead confirmed that view of corpses which had been formed the moment I saw my dead mother.

I came to know and pity and reverence the ordinary man: particularly dear Sergeant Ayres, who was (I suppose) killed by the same shell that wounded me. I was a futile officer (they gave commissions too easily then), a puppet moved about by him, and he turned this ridiculous and painful relation into something beautiful, became to me almost like a father.

But for the rest, the war – the frights, the cold, the smell of H. E. (high explosives), the horribly smashed men still moving like half-crushed beetles, the sitting or standing corpses, the landscape of sheer earth without a blade of grass, the boots worn day and night till they seemed to grow to your feet – all this shows rarely and faintly in memory. It is too cut off from the rest of my experience and often seems to have happened to someone else.

And here’s a collection of rare photos taken during the last two years of the war by the French Army. Using Gallica, bibliothèque numérique de la Bibliothèque nationale de France as its primary photo source, this site has done an excellent job of collecting and cataloging colored photos from the French National Archives.

“Although color photography was around prior to 1903, the Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis, patented the process in 1903 and developed the first color film in 1907,” the site notes, explaining the colored photos.

“The French army was the primary source of color photos during the course of World War One,” the site adds.