Jump to content
Free downloads from TNA ×
The Great War (1914-1918) Forum

Remembered Today:

Forbidden WW1 photos


sherree

Recommended Posts

Hello Trainee Pathologist,

What were the educational details you were able to glean from the photos of the dead soldiers?

Patterns of injury provided by smallarms (most), explosives (essentially = artillery; the dead French soldier up in the tree) and chemical weapons (the torso of the soldier with the skin burns).

Also to look at some of the skeletonised corpses and wonder how long they'd been lying there brings to mind all my lessons about what factors accelerate or retard decay. A corpse lying in the mud (moist) in warm (or at least not Northern European winter) conditions will rot to nothingness quite quickly, or at least the parts that are not protected by clothing will, which is why you see a lot of pictures of bodies lying around where most of the corpse is intact but the head is just reduced to a skull. And rats, worms, flies (i.e. maggots) etc. accelerate the process.

Mostly looking at the pictures of the bodies causes my mind to flick through all the things I might see and/or should specifically look for if I could autopsy that person. Also, the emphasis would not be on discovering 'who did it', as it would in a civil, criminal homicide trial, so much as actually cataloguing the injuries themselves and whether they had a particular pattern.

I'm not sure whether they actually bothered, with casualty levels running as high as they did, but close examination of a recovered friendly soldier's body might yield unusual patterns of injury suggesting a new weapon whilst recovering and autopsying enemy corpses would, given the known characteristics of your weapons, enable you to determine how effective those weapons were.

In particular, I could examine a body that had died without penetrating wounds or blast effects (therefore almost certainly gassed) and look for, e.g. lung-limited effects (haemorrhage, congestion - reflected in darkness, wetness like a sponge and increased weight) vs. external effects that a blistering agent was in use, and by examining which parts of the body had been blistered/burned, I could determine whether (some part of) the soldier's clothing was resistant to the agent, and if so, how the uniform could be altered to improve protection against the weapon.

I could look at the living who had been exposed in the next trench and conclude that a dose-response relationship existed: that heavy drenching with the agent caused death, for example, whereas a light whiff only produced extreme debility, and I could put that together with soldiers' reports of what they had felt to take a guess at the chemical nature of the gas.

I could use the known capabilities of weapons and the injuries they cause to improve protection from the weapon (e.g. introduction of the steel helmet, which protected against flying bits of metal which might otherwise have caused grievous head injuries, although it was not proof against deliberately aimed bullets).

This ought to give you an example of how the photos were educational for me, although "professionally thought-provoking" might be a better way to put it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

I looked at the site Sheree mentioned. I thought it was incredibly interesting, particularly the parts about the problems of disposing of rusting munitions. I'm afraid I must admit to not being exactly shocked by any of it, (..although greatly moved) I suppose I have been bombarded with violent images all my life..

Most interesting to me was the mention of Hubert Wilkins, whose great niece was married to one of my 4th cousins and her son was one of the people who inspired me to become interested in Family History, an interest that brought me to the GWF in the first place.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 months later...
It is a difficult subject isn't it?

Are wars honourable, should they be fought? In certain cases, yes they had to be. WWII is a prime example, without detracting that this is WWI site! But no war is honourable.

Should WWI have been fought? Looking back it is exactly how you have put it in your final lines. I believe that it was a waste of what historians have coined an 'Ill used generation'.

When I first read CWD, and I still have the original copy, it had a deep and lasting impact on me, it still has the ability to shock me now. Yes, it ddn't stop WWII and wars being fought now, but it has the ability to even now make people stop and think. We have to keep doing that in order that one day we can stop war.

I joined the services too, I saw and did a lot of things. I witnessed terrible things and still do as a police officer. But it has taught me many things about my own immortality and that we have to live for today as you never know what will be coming round the corner.

Most of all it has taught me to show people the sacrifice others made for what we have, for better or worse.

The one poem I think that reflects all this is the poem I use at the bottom of my signature and I have provided the full version below for everyone to inwardly digest:

If you are able

save for them a place

inside of you.

And save one backward glance

when you are leaving

for the places they can

no longer go.

Be not ashamed to say

you loved them,

though you may

or may not have always.

Take what they have taught you

with their dying,

and keep it with your own.

And in that time

when men decide and feel safe

to call war insane,

take one moment to embrace

those gentle heroes

you left behind.

Steve

that's a beautiful poem! If there were more poets in high places maybe there wouldn't be war! baldwinsan!
Link to comment
Share on other sites

As I remember it, my uncle had a camera very much like that, which he continued to use into the 1950s. Took quite good family snaps as I recall.

I still have such a camera.

Whilst I was serving I oft took a very small camera ashore with me if I wanted to remain inconspicuous (rather than carrying an SLR) a little 16mm still camera with a wide range of shutter speeds and apertures and also a mini-flash gun (bulb)with, this a Minolta 16, took stunning slides.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hello

an interesting site, the pictures are quite differant to any others I have seen

Ian

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just looked at the site.http://www.greatwar.nl/

Seen some of them before.

One that got me was "Female Russian soldier raped and killed."

just had a look at the mentioned web site,

these pictures really bring the meaning of war to everyone,

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 8 months later...

hello I remember having a book writen by a German and some of the photos were so awful!! I threw it out, I usually donate books to the city library but this!, dear God I just could not hand it over to a library.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...