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Remembered Today:

Zonnebeke Church - troops in shell holes?


AndyT175

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Hi all

Please see the attached photo. It's a crop from an aerial photo in my collection showing Zonnebeke Church and the road running up to the station. I'm intrigued by the little circles in the arrowed shell holes - are they troops and if so who? If not troops, then what? The same detail appears in other shell holes in the photo....

Reference notes on the photo:

21.A.1017

28.D.27.b

27.9.17 - 12

Any suggestions gratefully received!

Cheers

Andy

post-14025-1213548564.jpg

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It may be my memory playing tricks on me BUT I think I saw the same photo in the Zonnebeke museum - which indicated these were men in trenches. I'm not so sure myself !? the concentration of them looks too high - especially in the left hand crater/trench etc.

As to what they are - if not live humans - I have no reasonable idea. - the crumpled dead?

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Andy

Is there any way you can scan just that section so we can get some more detail? It up Ive tried to enlarge it but the definition is not good enough. While they could be men I agree with Moston the concentration looks to high as well some of the circles seem to be outside the shell holes. If they are not men then Im intrigued as to what they could be.

Tim B

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Scan it at 300 to 500 dpi, crop the area in photoshop, zoom, mess about with the contrast, levels etc, it may make it clearer. If you know how to mess about with colours you can pull out the RGB channels and mess with them.

If you want to post it back on the forum youll always have to convert it down to 72 dpi, in which case you need to unclick resample image when you change the resolution.

have you got photoshop?

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After peering for a while, I've half convinced myself there is a rough line of men going from the right of the arrows.

Barbara

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Here's a crop from the highest res scan that I've got at the moment. It's the red channel with the contrast enhanced a wee bit.

post-14025-1213727863.jpg

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I would say the "men" are small (shell)holes.

Roel

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Also because the colour of what would be the 'helmets' exactly matches the color of the ground.

Had it been helmets, the colour would have been darker.

Roel

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Just showed this to a friend at work who suggested that the fact they look raised in the first picture is an optical illusion caused by the angle of the light and that tinting of the picture when they are simply shell holes. There are other aerial photos from this time that clearly show men in them but I cant seem to find any right now. If I remember you can see more then the tops f their helmets.

Tim B

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I have some very similar aerial shots of positions near Tyne Cot following 66th Division's abortive attack of 9th October 1917. Greater experts than me on aerial photo interpreatation have indeed identified the little circles as the 'dustbin lids' of troops in shellholes.

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