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.
This painting, from the collection of the Imperial War Museum, shows German prisoners of war playing in the snow outside Alexandra Palace in London.
At the beginning of the First World War the area housed Belgian refugees, but as the war continued it was transformed into an internment camp for Germans and Austrians.
Soldiers of the Australian 5th Division on their way to the trenches rest near Mametz, Somme in December 1916.
From the collection of the Australian War Memorial, Canberra.
The infamous game. Georgia Tech on the left. Source.
On the 7th of October, 1916, a college football game was played between Cumberland and Georgia Tech in Atlanta, USA.
Cumberland, from Tennessee, failed to score at all, leading the most lopsided score in the history of the sport: 0 – 222. The college had already discontinued its football program, but were not allowed to back out of the game.
The British Army on the Western Front, 1914-1918: Gunners of the Royal Garrison Artillery outside a bomb-proof dug-out at Reninghelst (Reningelst), Belgium. 15th June 1916.
