Sometimes I'm At War Sometimes I'm Not - Tumblr Posts
Aldeburgh, Suffolk by mira66 Via Flickr: World War I Memorial in church of SS Peter & Paul. Aldeburgh, Suffolk. By Gilbert Bayes 1919. racns.co.uk/sculptures.asp?action=getsurvey&id=1176 Originally posted for GuessWhereUK guessed by Julia Batterbee
Studies for "Entering the War" by John Singer Sargent, 1920-1922
The heart and sword was a popular motif carved by soldiers on both sides of the conflict
Charles Spencelayh, Who Dies if England Lives (1914)
Harvey Dunn, The Sentry (1918)
Cdn stretcher bearers returning to camp after a hard night. WWI "... you’d hear a mournful cry from a bush perhaps twenty yards away, ‘Stretcher-bearers, Stretcher-bearers’, and all you could do was to ease your stretcher down on the ground for a moment, go over and see to the case, give them an injection if necessary or some tablets to ease the pain, and tell them you’d come back.”
Vandalized nude carved by French WWI soldier in an underground city
They didn’t see the war in black and white. They did not experience this war in black and white. They experienced the war in full living colour. So shouldn’t we now, with the technology we have, turn it from a black and white war back to the color war again? - Peter Jackson THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD | 2018
one of the things about WWI that makes me kind of crazy is the numerous pictures of soldiers chilling in shell craters, way behind the front lines. they have been conditioned to find comfort and safety in a hole
R. Crowhurst, The Angel of Mons, c. 1914
''As a soldier reloads his weapon over a wounded comrade, the Angels of Mons shield him from harm.''
Portrait in stone of Britain’s wartime leader, Lord Kitchner. He lost his life when the HMS Hampshire was sunk in June, 1916.
Troops of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry (Ox and Bucks LI) sniping from front line trenches.
The Last Laugh
-Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)
‘Oh! Jesus Christ! I’m hit,’ he said; and died.
Whether he vainly cursed or prayed indeed,
The Bullets chirped — In vain, vain, vain!
Machine-guns chuckled — Tut-tut! Tut-tut!
And the Big Gun guffawed.
*
Another sighed - ‘O Mother, — Mother, — Dad!’
Then smiled at nothing, childlike, being dead.
And the lofty Shrapnel-cloud
Leisurely gestured, — Fool!
And the splinters spat, and tittered.
*
‘My Love!’ one moaned. Love-languid seemed his mood,
Till slowly lowered, his whole face kissed the mud.
And the Bayonets’ long teeth grinned;
Rabbles of Shells hooted and groaned;
And the Gas hissed.
On November 7th, 1920, in strictest secrecy, four unidentified British bodies were exhumed from temporary battlefield cemeteries at Ypres, Arras, the Asine and the Somme. None of the soldiers who did the digging were told why. The bodies were taken by field ambulance to GHQ at St-Pol-Sur-Ter Noise. Once there, the bodies were draped with the union flag. Sentries were posted and Brigadier-General Wyatt and a Colonel Gell selected one body at random. The other three were reburied. A French Honour Guard was selected and stood by the coffin overnight of the chosen soldier overnight. On the morning of the 8th November, a specially designed coffin made of oak from the grounds of Hampton Court arrived and the Unknown Warrior was placed inside. On top was placed a crusaders sword and a shield on which was inscribed: “A British Warrior who fell in the GREAT WAR 1914-1918 for King and Country”. On the 9th of November, the Unknown Warrior was taken by horse-drawn carriage through Guards of Honour and the sound of tolling bells and bugle calls to the quayside. There, he was saluted by Marechal Foche and loaded onto HMS Vernon bound for Dover. The coffin stood on the deck covered in wreaths, surrounded by the French Honour Guard. Upon arrival at Dover, the Unknown Warrior was met with a nineteen gun salute - something that was normally only reserved for Field Marshals. A special train had been arranged and he was then conveyed to Victoria Station, London. He remained there overnight, and, on the morning of the 11th of November, he was finally taken to Westminster Abbey. The idea of the unknown warrior was thought of by a Padre called David Railton who had served on the front line during the Great War the union flag he had used as an altar cloth whilst at the front, was the one that had been draped over the coffin. It was his intention that all of the relatives of the 517,773 combatants whose bodies had not been identified could believe that the Unknown Warrior could very well be their lost husband, father, brother or son… THIS is the reason we wear poppies. We do not glorify war. No one who has been to war would ever glorify it.
Small officer’s quarters cut out of stone into a hillside near the front line
Jun 11 1917 in WWI
IWM (Q 2314) “Soldiers, probably from the 12th Battalion, the East Surrey Regiment, seen in a British communication trench in Ploegsteert Wood, during the Battle of Messines" by Brooks, Ernest (Lieutenant) (Photographer)
© IWM (Q 236) British troops at the recreation hut at the 11th British Corps School. Soldiers are from a variety of units including Machine Gun Corps, East Surrey, North Staffordshire, Hampshire, Royal Dublin Fusiliers and Royal Sussex Regiments.