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What They Carried, Part V (1917)

JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post

This is an example from my WWI news photo service collection--this one showing a newly-minted soldier, very heavily laden and off to France, where no doubt he would quickly lose a lot of that clanging, heavy, cumbersome, and probably-useless stuff.  The description (below) accompanied the photo and was the suggested caption to be used with the image when published.  

See this link http://longstreet.typepad.com/thesciencebookstore/2015/10/what-they-carried-part-iv-us-soldier-1917.html for four other posts I made here on this blog on "What They Carried" into battle. 

If you'd like the original, see this link in our books for sale section: http://longstreet.typepad.com/world_war_i_photography/2014/09/heavily-laden-soldier-ca-1918.html

For a general explanation of the WWI press photo archive, see http://longstreet.typepad.com/world_war_i_photography/

 

 

Wounded U.S. Servicemen in London, July 4, 1918

JF Ptak Science Books  

This image--from a collection that I've mentioned previously on this blog--shows a group of wounded-in-action American Doughboys recuperating in London on 4 July 1918.  There were at least six of these soldiers aboard this bus, touring, being invited to celebrate their independence day in London, their flag--and a big one at that--draped across the bow of the upper deck of the bus. 

There were be about 204,000 American soldiers wounded and 116,500 killed during WWI, the end of which was in sight at this point, just five months away.  These were some of the survivors of the American share of war casualties.  Almost all other nations fared far worse (see below)

 
 

• ITEM:  Original photograph  from News Photo Service company, July, 1918.  8x6 inches. Good condition.  $750

The U.S. lost .13%  of its population to casualties (killed and wounded) during the war.  New Zealand 18,000/41,312 killed/wounded amounted to 1.6% of its population.  The U.K. lost 2.19% (964,000/1,663,000), Italy was 3.48% (650,000/953,000 plus 650,000 civilian casualties), while France suffered a 4.29% (1.4 million/4.27 mil) blow of its total population to war.  Things were worse on the other side:  Germany 3.82% (2 mil/2.4 mil plus 426,000 civilian deaths, and the Ottoman Empire 12% (400,000/771,000 plus 2.1 million civilian deaths.   Worst of all was the Ally  Serbia, suffering a catastrophic 16% loss of its population to war, including 275,000/725,000 plus 426,000 civilian casualties.  As gruesome as the numbers were, the Americans felt only a small percentage of the total sting of war--by 11 November, more than 21 million soldiers would have been wounded, with 9.7 million soldiers and 6.8 million civilians killed (for a total of 16.4 million).  The numbers of killed and casualties are so gigantic that it is difficult to grasp what they all mean. 

A Parade and Metal Drive, WWI, 1917

JF Ptak Science Books

Like its more-famous WWII counterpart, scrap drives during The Great War were also frequently conducted.  This is an original photograph showing just such a thing, depicting two Uncle Sams surrounded by Boy Scouts pulling a large hollow metal sphere. The sphere was rolled from Buffalo NY to New York City in an effort to raise awareness for the purchase of Liberty Bonds. By the time the ball reached NYC, it showed definite signs of wear and tear.

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•  ITEM:  original photograph, ca. mid-1918.  8x6 inches.  Good condition.  $750

And the detail:

 

 

Tree Rings of Soldiers' Clothes, 1918

ITEM:  Original news serivce photograph, 1918.  8x6 inches.  Good condition.  $250.00

ref:  JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

 

Aside from the strong impact that this 1918 image makes, the enormous mounds of clothing of captured German solders that were routinely handled as part of their processing, it struck a deeper chord to an older image still (that we'll see below).  The photograph seems threatening to me, even though the action taking place in it wasn't, it was mundane--the men, who I believe are German POW's, are processing the clothing for disinfection and cleaning.  But the size of the mound reminds us of the magnitude of the numbers of the dozens of millions who were killed during WWI, as well as the millions who were taken prisoner.  What remains to be said about this image is how often that pile of clothing was replaced:  is it a monthly, or weekly, or daily pile?  My guess is that it was more daily than anything else, if for no other reason than there is an enormous oil lamp in the background of the photo, suggesting that the process went on all day and into the night.  My initial reaction is that this pile was replicated often during any given month....

 

And the image it reminds me of are those made of the enormous mounds of buffalo hides, piles readied for shipment away from the Plains by rail. 

I am in no way suggesting that the prisoner were skinned like the buffalo, not in any way.  But they do bear a resemblance in the way that thousands of men or buffalo could be represented in such a compact space, flattened husks of the living thing, gross representations of big numbers. 

A Million Miles of Barbed Wire? (1918)

ITEMS:  three photographs, all 1918, as shown.  Each 9x7 inches, in very good conidtion.  Each $250.   Ref:  JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

 The following photos were found in my small collection of World War I news photo service images, all of which were made in 1918.  They show the preparation of barbed wire entanglements--these were devilish things, made to grab a soldier and suck them in into a deeper hold when resisted, like a sort of sharp, metallic quicksand.  Since there were something like 12-25,000 miles of trenches dug during WWI, I think that it might be a safe bet to say that there were a million miles of barbed wire fencing laid down--that would be equal to about 75 feet of wiring for every soldier who served, or about 200 feet for every person killed. Given the tactics, the trenches, the barbed wire, the machine guns, the gas, and so on, it is no wonder that there was very little advancement over battlefields that stretched for miles and involved hundreds of thousands of troops, costing (sometimes) hundreds of thousands of casualties.  It would have been just insane-nasty to have to charge through fields of this stuff while being bombed and shot at by people in holes. 

No gloves, here, not for the soldier weaving the wire or for the spinner in the background:

I notice that in this photograph the only person wearing gloves is the lead model, front-and-center:

Here's the support staff assembling the

Making THings Disappear: German POWs, 1918

ITEM:  Original News Photo Service photograph, 1918.  8x9 inches.  Very good condition.  $275.00

In continuing series of posts on Blank and Empty Things is this image on fading, disappearing German prisoners of war.  The French had been pounding them in western France in the summer of 1918, and Germans were surrendering and being captured by the thousands.  This news service photograph shows one of the assembly camps with about 10,000 POWs--I made a heavy scan of the group of soldiers in the distance and was  a little taken aback to see that the men had lost their human forms,  looking like bacteria, fading into their future.  

The full image is impressive, and shows just a small fraction of the men taken prisoner during 1918; and it shows even a lesser percentage of those killed.

This detail of the foreground shows the familiarity necessitated by the men being pressed so closely together--there was little free ground.

Also, I thought that the French soldiers in the midst of the prisoner might've been feeding them, but it seems as though they were just walking in their midst.

World War I in Ivory--Pianos and Recovery

ITEM 1:  original 1918 photograph, 6x8 inches, piano playing for U.S. soldiers in hospital.  $650.00

ITEM 2:  original 1918 photograph, 6x8 inches, four U.S. servicemen singing at piano.  $350.00

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1409

These images come from my collection of World War I news photo service photographs, and are among the minority that show even momentary happiness.  In both of these cases, the emotion resolves itself in song and in the piano.  The first image takes place in a U.S. overseas hospitals for wounded soldiers, and they seem genuinely relieved to have the attention and the entertainment. (Both images are available at our blog bookstore.)

The second image is dated 2 November 1918--just nine days before the armistice--and shows the "Broadway Quartet" as they rehearse "I'm Only a Buck Private" for a behind-the-lines show for U.S. servicemen, somewhere in France.  The note with the image (from the Western Newspaper Union) says that the staging used for their shows came from found wood, bits of flooring, and camouflage netting torn into pieces.  

Barbed Wire Cutting Device on the Mall, 1918.

ITEM:  original news photo service photograph, by Clinedinst studios (of Washington DC).  7x9 inches.  Very good condition.  1918.  $150

"Will Cut its Way Through Hun Entanglements" reads the header to the caption for this new photo service war photo from the Central News Photo Service, published nearly at the end of 1918, just a few months before the end of the war. The inventor, John E. Logan, was demonstrating his invention "before senators and representatives of Congress" on a "miniature tank wire entanglement".  The "entanglement" wire was much nastier than what you'd think of as the "barbed wire" of today--not concertina wire, but something small and nasty that was meant to catch soldiers, to pin them more deeply in the wire like a sharp metallic quicksand, stopping their advance and making them meat bait for machine gunners and everyone else. 

Logan attracted a fair size crowd for his demonstration in the vicinity of the Capitol.  His machine seemed to work well, too, cutting through 72 strands of wire in about a half minute.  I'm not sure how many of these machines were produced (can't find anything on them offhand)  but there would've been a need for a great number of them, given that since there was something like 12-25,000 miles of trenches dug during the war that there must've been millions of miles of barbed wire produced.  (That's an off-hand guess, but it probably isn't horribly wrong.)

The Children's Parade, the Liberation of Ostende, 1918.

ITEM:  original news photo service photograph, Underwood and Underwood, 1918.  7x9 inches.  Very good condition.  $200    Ref:  JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1393

Ostende, a port city of West Flanders on the North Sea in  northwestern  Belgium, was an important stronghold and also a  key to holding the inland port of Bruges, which is something that the Germany Army was able to do until the very end of World War I.  Under constant occupation by an invading force, the city was only liberated by the armistice signed two days before this photo was made, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. 

Some of these children might still be alive, though all but two of the soldiers of this war are all dead.  I remember talking to my grandmother ten years or so ago, asking her about what she did to celebrate the end of the war.  She laughed, and then told me that she and her sisters and brothers went out to the street (in their small town of Housatonic, Massachusetts) and danced and danced.  She then said that a few other children went to their kitchens to come out with pots to bang with wooden spoons--and then it struck me, taking away my breath, that what she was talking about was celebrating the end of WWI, not WWII, which is what I thought she was going to talk about. 

Cold and Understatement on the Western Front, 1916

JF Ptak Science Books 

ITEM:  Original news photo service photograph, a Canadian Official War Photo courtesy of the Western Newspaper Union. 1916.  8x6 inches.  Fine condition.  $425

The caption stamped on the back of the news photo service agency photograph (from the Western Newspaper Union) said that the bitter cold encountered by these Canadian soldiers ont he Western Front in the winter of 1916 "was one of many difficulties encountered by the soldiers".  "Great hardships have been caused by the frigid weather in this region" continues the caption.  Indeed.  Even for Canadians this was a cold winter, though not so cold that the Canadian trooper in the foreground stopped to put on his gloves to remove the ice from the water trough. These soldiers may have been cavalry, as there is a horse-like medallion on the front of their lids. 

Evidently the role of the cavalry in the BEF along the Western Front is an under-appreciated thing, or misunderstood, at least.  I'm not sure how they influenced the outcome of this stagnant section of the war, where the line of battle remained essentially unchanged throughout the duration of the war.  Millions of troops were deeply entrenched over hundreds of miles of battlefront, wailing away at one another with massive artillery barrages, countless machine gun nests, and then eventually tanks, planes and poison gas.  Back in February 1916 there weather was so tough and frigid that the battle of Verdun was postponed a bit, waiting for less intense weather conditions.  Dozens of millions of artillery shells and  billions of bullets later, in 1918, there was little change in the positions of the armies, except of course for the millions of casualties.