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A CD, supplied with a recently purchased book on the WW1 History of the Australian 28th Battalion, contained these interesting pictures of Aussie Infantry fixing bayonets to their No.1 Lee Enfields and then going over the top. The second photograph is labelled Zonnebeke, which is located in Belgium.
Whilst their shoulder patches indicate that they were from another Battalion and the photographs are probably staged, I believe that they are interesting enough to share.
Paul
They all look pretty relaxed, don't they?
The artillery fire in the background looks real enough. Perhaps they are in a reserve trench some disatnce behind the front. They must consider it safe enough to expose themselves as both the photographer & another soldier seen walking about on upper left side of the picture are above the trench.
The ground bursts in the second pic look added in.
The things I notice are:
a. the bloke facing towards the rear of the trench in the foreground is looking at the bloke standing above ground in the upper left corner of the first picture.
b. the photographer is obviously above ground in both pictures and has moved for the second photo.
c. there is visible smoke (shellburst?) in the distant background and what appears to be structures on the skyline of the first photo. All that is obscured by smoke, real or added, in the second photo.
d. the one visible shoulder flash is a vertically aligned 2 colour rectangle. 5th Div AIF had vertically aligned shoulder flashes.
My suspicion is that these are actually 5DIV troops in a rear training area performing a scripted manoeuvre.
I reckon this is an exercise - there is no barbed wire in evidence...
I guess so, no harm in that. But there's clearly two pics here. Joined up at the right edge of the second photo. Not even the same area. No matter, these guys undoubtably did their duty eventually...Quote:
Originally Posted by RobD
No wire, firebays, parapet or parados, it's probably a communication trench. Of course it might the jumping off point for some advance laterally. Photographer's perspective looks dangerous.
Way too clean to be actual.
These are part of a series taken by a well known Australian war photographer named Frank Hurley. He is renowned for producing actual colour photos during the 1st war.
He was known to use composite negatives to produce some of his work.
He also worked along side CEW Bean the historian and was very much to be found 'at the front' but was on record as being frustrated at the photographic equipment and techology and it's inability to truly capture the scene 'as it happened', hence some use of combined plates.
I have a book of his work titled 'Hurley at war' covering his work on the western front with the AIF and in the middle east with the Australian Light Horse Regiments.
Don't think we should worry about a photo being "staged", the chances of any of those lads coming unscathed out of the other end were slim and they're all gone now along with theur memories of a much togher life than we'll see.
I don't think these are staged, or rather I don't think they were taken in the rear area trenches or in a training area. The posts sticking up on the left side of the trench might be the remains of a wire entanglement. Can't see what else they would be. The parapet on the trench may have been reversed if this was a captured German trench, as it seems to be. It may not have been held long enough by the Germans for wire to be set up fully, or obviously, to be dug out and revetted the way front line trenches usually were. This is the kind of depth a trench would be after a day or two of digging.
In the second photo there are three Gew98s lying around and one German bayonet stuck into the trench wall by the forearm of the man closest to the camera. Not what you find in a training area.
In the first photo the man approaching on foot in the upper left corner of the photo suggests that the enemy were not in sight. There is another Gew98 muzzle down in the trench. What looks like the top of a Service Rum jar behind the trench with the open neck facing the camera.
Probably photos taken during a major battle when former German trenches were occupied. The tarps and blankets set up for cover of some kind is not the sort of thing I would expect in a staged photo. For shade or to hide from aircraft or both? The background is either heavy shelling or a smoke screen, presumably from smoke shells.
The fixing bayonets bit could be a bit of a set up; two men in the background seem to have theirs fixed already.
The photographer obviously felt safe enough to get up on top to take the photos.
Attachment 33832Attachment 33831
The picture where they exit the trench has been joined at the right side. That's the one where the rifle's lying out. Don't know why, don't care why, but it has been joined from another similar but different photo.