Menin Gate Memorial to the British and Empire missing in the Mons and Ypres battles in Belgium, over 50,000 names are inscribed on the walls.
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 A British General having left his H.Q miles behind the front surveyed a scene like this burst into tears and said ”My God did we actually send men to fight in this?”.  Menin Gate Memorial to the missing of the Mons and Ypres campaigns in Belgium. The last post is sounded every night at 8pm by the Belgians, in a moving ceremony; still repeated to this day.  German prisoners of war trudge into captivity escorted by Scottish soldiers; in the shattered landscape a horse, bloated in death lies in the road. Horse and mule casualties matched the human toll; World War I was the last to see horses used. The piles of chalk suggest a location on the Somme.  British soldiers advancing across no mans land, from their pace the battle seems to have moved further on.  A rest area just behind the front line. A field kitchen is preparing a meal, whilst some of the soldiers wash and shave; probably for the first time in days!  Scottish soldiers trudge through the ever-present mud, carrying bedding perhaps on the way to a rear rest area. The Germans called Scottish soldiers ”The Ladies from Hell”.  King of the battlefield: a Vickers machine gun, along with the German Maschinengewehr 08, which caused some 90% of the 60,000 British casualties. On the first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916, the crews were given short thrift when captured. This machine gun has been mounted on a motorcycle side car to give greater mobility.  British ”Tommies” struggle through the cloying mud with an injured comrade, gas respirators are prominent on their chests. Soldiers ironically called this Third Battle of Ypres ”Passiondale or Passchendaele”.  The desolation in this photograph, was repeated on every battlefield in France, it could have been taken almost anywhere. The size of the crater was probably the result of a mine explosion. |
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