World War One In Incredible Photographs: Every One An Epic Story

WE asked the question: how will World War One be remembered? The answer: photographs. Oh, for sure they can lie. They can provide a half, stylized, self-conscious record. But if you see enough photographs, the truth outs.

We’ve compiled a gallery of quite simply outstanding photographs of the Great War. Ordering this big album of photos is an impossible job. We’ve tried but each time we look again, a few image captures our attention and stirs the imagination.

Images like the Moroccan soldiers of the French Army entertaining their chiefs with traditional music; a British soldier gazing out of a dug-out as the body of a dead German soldier lies nearby at Flers, during the battle of the Somme; the German football match behind enemy lines; the grim scene at the German trenches in front of Guillemont; Kaiser Wilhelm II dressed in his white uniform pointing the way ahead and watching the battle from a safe distance; The Queen’s own Oxfordshire Hussars snaking round the village as they march to war; the military funeral of Baron Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen, the ‘Red Baron’, shot down on the 21st of April, 1918; London’s welcome to Sergeant Michael O’Leary, VC, of the Irish Guards; a remarkable photograph of the Battle of Jutland; French troops throwing rocks at advancing German troops from their hillside trench in the Vosges; and the women doing the jobs of men back home in Britain.

Behind every photograph is a story. Any sensitive soul should be able to imagine them…