British air mechanics work on wrecked fuselages on the 12th of July, 1918, as the First World War neared its end. The image was taken at the aircraft repair depot near Rang-du-Fliers in the north of France.
From the collection of the Imperial War Museums.
7th July 1918: British members of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps work on a car in Étaples, France.
Exactly one year earlier the WAAC was formed as the women’s unit of the British Army. In the final sixteen months of the First World War some 57 000 women served.
A British sentry is photographed here in the lead-up to the Battle of the Somme. Seen on the 28th of June, 1916 – three days before the months-long battle began – he watches from outside Café Jordan, Mailly Maillet, France.
The photographer was Ernest Brooks, a Englishman most famous for his work in the First World War.
This image is of the British Army preparing mortar ammunition in Acheux, France for the infamous Battle of the Somme in the First World War. The image is dated the 28th of June, 1916, while the battle began on the 1st of July, resulting in over a million casualties (about one third of the soldiers who fought).
The battle concluded on the 18th of November.
28th June 1916: British troops near Doullens, France head to the front to begin the Battle of the Somme.
This infamous First World War battle claimed the lives of about a third of the three million soldiers who fought from the start of July until mid-November.
Members of the Barnard College‘s class of 1913 walk out on the 4th of June. The women-only college in New York was founded in 1889 in response to Columbia University refusing to admit women.
1st June 1915: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener – the famous Lord Kitchener of the World War One recruitment poster – is seen here reviewing the 10th (Irish) Division in Basingstoke, England.
Later that month the troops received their orders to depart for the infamous Gallipoli Campaign.
Kitchener was killed by a German mine the following year, while travelling to Russia aboard the HMS Hampshire.
