the old wartime photos thread

[villiers]

approx. fifty years old

[gunner]

Found this one at internet. Australian infantery at Ypres.

Regards

Gunner

[Peter Laidler]

The photo of the RAOC (Royal Army Ordnance Corps) Armourers with their work cut out remind me of a large cache of weapons found in Iraq recently. About 4,100 Lee Enfields, 6 Vickers and 10 Lewises but if you thought these were bad, then the ones found in a cache in Basra were even worse........... The middle eastern armies suffer from a lack of oil judging from the, er...., woeful...., yes, that's the word I'm looking for..., condition of their weapons.

Note that the censor has obliterated the RAOC cap badges of the Armourers

[Surpmil]

A photo I show to collecting newbies who are after a "mint, unissued early war dated WW1 SMLE"......





There is a worse picture somewhere that shows a corresponding heap of discarded webbing and personal effects about 20ft high....

There's a battalion's worth of rifles in that picture and the men that carried them were no doubt mostly dead. Extremely muddy too, and all about equally so, makes me think this was salvage work after a major engagment, Passchendaele comes to mind, but it could be any one of many of course. Were this just normal salvage work I don't think we'd see that many in one place, as the longer they sat like that, the worse condition they would be in, so I'd expect efforts were made to clean them up pretty quickly normally.

The edge of another pile in the background.