Sunday WW1 Remembered....

The Battle of Polygon Wood

26 September - 3rd October 1917

The Battle of Polygon Wood took place during the second phase of the Third Battle of Ypres in World War I and was fought near Ypres in Belgium 26 September – 3 October 1917, in the area from the Menin road to Polygon Wood and north towards the area beyond St Julien.

The name Polygon Wood was derived from the shape of a plantation forest that lay along the axis of the Australian advance on 26 September 1917. The wood was sometimes known as Racecourse Wood, as there was a track within it. Before the Great War, Polygon Wood was used by the Belgian Army and within it stands a large mound, known as the Butte, which was used as a rifle range; there was also a small airfield near the area.

Though smaller than in 1917, Polygon Wood is still large; the remains of three German pillboxes captured by the Australians lie deep among the trees but few trench lines remain. The Butte is still prominent and mounted on top of it is the 5th Australian Divisional memorial. There are two Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) cemeteries in the vicinity of Polygon Wood, the CWGC Polygon Wood Cemetery and the CWGC Buttes New British Cemetery. Within Buttes New British Cemetery is the CWGC Polygon Wood New Zealand Memorial to the Missing.

Source:Wikipedia

A wrecked German concrete observation post, 26 September 1917, seen during the Battle of Polygon Wood part of the Battle of Passchendaele.

Photograph : Brooks, Ernest ( Lieutenant)
Imperial War Museum
© IWM (Q 2908)

Motorised transport on the Ypres-Zonnebeck road, alongside which wrecked transport are seen with their split loads of shells, etc. 30 September 1917, during the Battle of Polygon Wood, part of the Battle of Passchendaele. In the background men are filling in shell-holes.

Photograph : Brooks, Ernest ( Lieutenant)
Imperial War Museum
© IWM (Q 2917)

Battle of Polygon Wood 26 September - 3 October: Members of the 13th Australian Field Ambulance sheltering in funk holes along Anzac Ridge.

Photograph : Australian Official Photographer
Imperial War Museum
© IWM (E(AUS) 839)

As always, I am indebted to the Imperial War Museum for the opportunity to share these fascinating photographs taken at the time by WW1 photographers.

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Sunday WW1 Remembered ..

The winter of 1917 was particularly cold for those soldiers stationed on the Western Front

Arriving at their destination

Photographer
John Warwick Brooke

Infantry marching in the snow

Photographer
John Warwick Brooke

A halt on their way to the Trenches

Photographer
John Warwick Brooke

Bringing in a log for their camp fire 

Photographer
John Warwick Brooke

John Warwick Brooke was an official British WW1 photographer from 1916 - 1918

Photograph source : Nation Library Scotland

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Winter Warfare

By

 Edgell Rickwood

Colonel Cold strode up the Line

    (tabs of rime and spurs of ice);

stiffened all that met his glare:

    horses, men and lice.

Visited a forward post,

    left them burning, ear to foot;

fingers stuck to biting steel,

    toes to frozen boot.

Stalked on into No Man’s Land,

    turned the wire to fleecy wool,

iron stakes to sugar sticks

    snapping at a pull.

Those who watched with hoary eyes

    saw two figures gleaming there;

Hauptmann Kälte, colonel old,

    gaunt in the grey air.

Stiffly, tinkling spurs they moved,

    glassy-eyed, with glinting heel

stabbing those who lingered there

As this poem demonstrates there was nothing romantic about a snowy landscape in war 

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Sunday WW1 Remembered ...

Photographers in WW1

Ernest Brooks

1838 - 1936

Ernest Brooks was assigned to the Western Front in 1916 as the first official WW1 photographer. Brooks had previously worked with the Daily Mirror newspaper and his orders, as an honorary Second Lieutenant, was to take as many photographs as possible. He went on to produce several thousand war images between 1916 - 1918.

Brooks had previously enlisted in 1915 in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and was appointed as the Admiralty's official photographer as they prepared for the Gallipoli landings. However, in March 1916 Brookes was transferred to the War Office where he was appointed official war photographer. He was the only professional photographer to take photographs of the Battle of the Somme. 

This is one of his most iconic war images which was taken


at the Battle of Broodseinde near Ypres in October 1917

Ernest Brooks

Many other images were captured by the ordinary soldier on small pocket sized cameras. The Vest Pocket Kodak Camera (1912) and the Vest Pocket Autographic Kodak Camera (1915) were produced in the United States by the Kodak Eastman company between 1912 and 1926. During that period the company sold well over 2,000,000 models. In 1914 about 5,500 Vest Pocket Kodaks were sold in Britain. The following year, in 1915 this number had increased to over 28,000.

The convenient size of the camera (2.5 x 6 x 12 cms ) made it a popular choice for soldiers. The cameras were small, reliable and simple and could fit easily into a tunic pocket. The soldiers going out to the Western Front in 1914 were initially encouraged to make a visual record of events, but as the war progressed and the threat from increasing propaganda escalated, amateur photography was actively discouraged, with the threat of Court Marshall if the soldiers were found to have a camera on their person.

Taking pictures with 127 roll film, the black & white images, measuring just 4 x 6.4 cms, provided a comprehensive visual account of the life, and death, of the ordinary soldier during the First World War.

Very often photographs were collected as souvenirs and my husband's grandfather Sam Whalley, who served in the First World War with the Royal Fusiliers as a sixteen year old stable lad, and later with the 17th Lancers, had this German WW1 photograph amongst his war effects. 

Showing German soldiers waiting at a food wagon.

Barton Family Archive

It's worth mentioning, perhaps, and to put it into context, that today's modern iPhone is roughly the same height and width as the Vest Kodak Camera but what a difference a hundred years brings !!