Guns, Gas Masks and Pigeons
Soldiers in the trenches, men advancing across no man’s land, heavy weaponry – these are all well-known sights from World War One, the brutal conflict that began a century ago this year.
But in addition to these scenes, a selection of previously unpublished pictures from a private collection also reveals more unfamiliar aspects of the war, from squadron athletics to pigeons used to send messages at the Front.
An officer with the German Air Force sits on a dead wild boar outside the house where he was stationed on the Western Front, 1918.
German officers of Flieger Abteilung 280 have a party at a house where they were stationed in the summer of 1918, not long before the end of the war.
Officers stand at Air Training School 5 in Hannover in 1918.
Officers of the Imperial German Air Service compete at a squadron athletics meeting near the Western Front.
A building is pictured after a German “Friedrichshafen” seaplane crashed into its roof.
German officers stand under an observation balloon.
Sailors take part in morning exercises aboard a German Navy warship in 1917.
A German navy diver descends into the water.
Women work in a munitions factory in France in 1916.
Italian heavy artillery stands on the Italian Front.
An Austro-Hungarian soldier lies in a bunker.
British troops advance at the Battle of the Somme.
Captured German prisoners lie on the ground in Longueau.
An Allied aircraft flies over the Western Front.
