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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