Picture of the day
- Thread starter jwhc
- Start date
Those german soldiers are snipers with possibly their observers WW1. Rifles in the foreground have telescopes mounted and the
soldier to the right has his brown scope case slightly evident behind his left arm. Both Mauser GEW 98s in the fore have
turned down bolt handles also indicating sniping rifles. The dark orange circles on the back of their scopes is a rubber buffer
rarely seen today. All their equipment is fairly new - no helmet scuffs and little great coat mud. Too bad I can't read the red
regimental number on the epaulettes. They are all cold weather dressed and even have issue gloves. All are on high ground
because no mud/water in that trench. Its a rare pic of snipers. Sure wish I had one of those rifles. JOHN
soldier to the right has his brown scope case slightly evident behind his left arm. Both Mauser GEW 98s in the fore have
turned down bolt handles also indicating sniping rifles. The dark orange circles on the back of their scopes is a rubber buffer
rarely seen today. All their equipment is fairly new - no helmet scuffs and little great coat mud. Too bad I can't read the red
regimental number on the epaulettes. They are all cold weather dressed and even have issue gloves. All are on high ground
because no mud/water in that trench. Its a rare pic of snipers. Sure wish I had one of those rifles. JOHN
Liberation of Lille, France. October 1918, and boy is barefoot. In couple decades, he will change brodie for adrian and carry MAS instead SMLE in to the next war.
Yes ,because his French politicians decided to humiliate Germany instead of just pace.
A just peace ?
The French still remembered the peace that Prussia imposed upon them after the conclusion of the formal Treaty of Frankfurt on May 10, 1871
The harsh provisions of the Treaty of Frankfurt were then implemented: Germany annexed Alsace and half of Lorraine, with the city of Metz.
https://www.britannica.com/event/Franco-German-War.
The French still remembered the peace that Prussia imposed upon them after the conclusion of the formal Treaty of Frankfurt on May 10, 1871
The harsh provisions of the Treaty of Frankfurt were then implemented: Germany annexed Alsace and half of Lorraine, with the city of Metz.
https://www.britannica.com/event/Franco-German-War.
On a "flip" in an RCAF "Northstar" going over the Rockies, I watched a sailor pass out and require oxygen. We were not much above 10,000 feet.
I've logged 319 free falls with the Rhine Army Parachute Association (RAPA), many of them over 10,000' at Sennelager, Germany. Took our DH "Rapide" a while to climb to that altitude with a full stick. Once the stick was out of the aircraft, the pilot (usually a Brit Army Air Corps type) didn't waste any time losing altitude. The air starts to get pretty thin at that altitude.
Guessing those are original color photos, color photograph was around in those days, but not common. Gives you a much better perspective of what it was like.
Grizz
A pictorial history of color photography.
The first color photograph made by the three-color method suggested by James Clerk Maxwell in 1855, taken in 1861 by Thomas Sutton. The subject is a colored ribbon, usually described as a tartan ribbon.
An 1877 color photographic print on paper by Louis Ducos du Hauron, the foremost early French pioneer of color photography. The overlapping yellow, cyan and red subtractive color elements are apparent.
A 1903 Sanger Shepherd process[1] photograph of Col. Willoughby Verner by Sarah Angelina Acland, an English early pioneer color photographer.[2
The Emir of Bukhara, Alim Khan, in a 1911 color photograph by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky. At right is the triple color-filtered black-and-white glass plate negative, shown here as a positive.
A 1912 color photograph of Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky, who documented the Russian Empire with a color camera from 1909 to 1915
And to keep this on topic.
A 1917 Autochrome color photograph of a French Army lookout at his observation post during World War I.
Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_photography
The first color photograph made by the three-color method suggested by James Clerk Maxwell in 1855, taken in 1861 by Thomas Sutton. The subject is a colored ribbon, usually described as a tartan ribbon.
An 1877 color photographic print on paper by Louis Ducos du Hauron, the foremost early French pioneer of color photography. The overlapping yellow, cyan and red subtractive color elements are apparent.
A 1903 Sanger Shepherd process[1] photograph of Col. Willoughby Verner by Sarah Angelina Acland, an English early pioneer color photographer.[2
The Emir of Bukhara, Alim Khan, in a 1911 color photograph by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky. At right is the triple color-filtered black-and-white glass plate negative, shown here as a positive.
A 1912 color photograph of Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky, who documented the Russian Empire with a color camera from 1909 to 1915
And to keep this on topic.
A 1917 Autochrome color photograph of a French Army lookout at his observation post during World War I.
Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_photography
It's 23.
The service ceiling is the maximum altitude found in testing at which the aircraft is unable to climb at a rate higher than 50 feet per minute. Odds are, one wouldn't bother trying to get the Infaltoplane up to 10,000' because it would take quite a while as well as being not particularly useful...
bdft
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
Found the orginal caption on Reddit of all places.
Many more here:
https://www.colourbyrjm.co.uk/
An unidentified soldier of the Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 185 from Baden. We have no explanation for the Alarm Clock box, neither do we know where the photograph was taken although we date it to around 1915/16. The dug out, carved into the chalk, seems to be in a more secure part of the line. The soldier in the background is cleaning a standard G98 rifle: the soldier reading the "Stockacher Tagblatt" is probably the owner of the sniper rifle which has mounted a powerful telescopic sight of 4x magnification made by C.P. Goerz in Berlin.
A 1917 Autochrome color photograph of a French Army lookout at his observation post during World War I.
Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_photography
I'm picturing a Boch sniper lining up on that opening in the bullet shield ......
Back when I was around 12 years old, there was an old neighbor that had come to Canada after WWI, because he got a grant for 160 acres. Of course, back then the land was timbered wilderness.
Perry Cox was his name. He was on the long side of 70 years old at the time and still strong as a bull. He had good genes. He stayed strong/active/healthy into his early 90s and one night, died in his sleep.
He had two jobs during WWI. The first was driving a wagon, pulled by a team of mules that he dearly loved. Every morning, before the sun came up he would deliver supplies to the troops in the trenches and take away their dead on the return trip. He was a teamster in civilian life, so he just carried on with the trade in the Army, after being drafted. His mules got killed, during a bombardment from the German big guns and by then, they were mostly using trucks for the hauling chores. He was out of work and had only gone through basic training, before being selected as wagon driver. In the two years as a wagon driver, he had only fired his rifle a half dozen times, at RATS.
When he went back to Depot, he thought he would be reassigned to a motor company. No such luck. He had exceptional eyesight and was in very good physical condition. They were looking for men that had been in theater long enough to be familiar with goings on and a relatively good knowledge of the terrain and area.
He was taken to a rifle range to see how well he could shoot. He admitted he didn't like shooting. Being a tall, for the time, man, over 6 feet, he had a real aversion to recoil. He did like firearms though.
He couldn't hit a man size target to save his life. One thing though, he could see where his shots were landing before the observer could see them in his binos.
His second job was as a sniper's observer.
This was getting late in the war. Scoped rifles were available but "his" sniper preferred iron sights. Seems that a lot of snipers at the time were the best shot available in the trench.
He told me that when he became a "spotter" he started to feel the first real fear in his life. He had been frightened a few times before but this was different. It settled in his mind and he couldn't shake it. His sniper had a similar experience.
He told me they had several plates set up to shoot from and observe from. All of them were targeted by enemy troops and snipers several times a day, whether they were shooting from the position or not.
He always felt a bit of guilt when he spotted a target for his sniper. Funny thing, he never carried a rifle while he was with his sniper. He carried a pistol. Mostly because he had so much else to carry.
He also told me that the other troopies wouldn't associate with them. Understandable I guess. Snipers became one of the bains on the minds of troops in the trenches, inflicted on them every day and no place to go. Pretty gloomy.
Even worse for him was the filth. When I knew Perry, he was fastidious about cleanliness. Even his work clothes were washed and cleaned every day by his wife.
He would smile a lot and was quite willing to tell stories, which we loved. We helped him out on his dairy farm and in return, he would give us raw milk to drink. Heavy with cream and still warm. MMMMMM.
