Australian soldiers walking on duckboards through the shell-torn Château Wood, October 29, 1917.
s photograph is perhaps one of the most iconic and famous from the First World War, and was captured today 106 years ago by Australian Second Lieutenant Hubert Wilkins - but often, and wrongly, credited to the other and more well-known Australian war photographer Frank Hurley.
The photograph shows five Australian soldiers from the 110th Howitzer Battery of the 10th Field Artillery Brigade of the Australian 4th Division walking on duckboards inside the Château Wood near Hooge in Flanders, during the Third Battle of Ypres.
Four of the five soldiers have since been identified, with two of them confirmed. The soldier leading the party is Gunner James Macrea Fulton and the man to the right of him, staring into the camera, is Lieutenant Antony Devine. It's speculated the two next men behind are brothers - Gunner Hubert Lionel Nichols and Gunner Douglas Roy Nichols. The soldier at the back, whose faced is blurred, is for this reason unidentified.
.
All four identified soldiers survived the remainder of the First World War.
Related post
In honor of Halloween, check out this story about the "Ghost Army" from WWII!
During WWII, the Allied Armies deployed a tactical deception unit called the “Ghost Army.” Officially called the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops under Operation Quicksilver, the 1,100-man unit was given a unique mission within the Allied Army: to impersonate other Allied Army united to deceive the enemy.
From a few weeks after D-Day, when they landed in France, until the end of the war, they put on a “traveling road show” utilizing inflatable tanks, sound trucks, fake radio transmissions, scripts, and pretense.
Some troops went to Normandy two weeks after D-Day, where they simulated a fake Mulberry harbor at night with lights that attempted to draw German artillery from the real ones. After this, the entire unit assisted in tying up the German defenders of Brest by simulating a larger force than was actually encircling them.
As the Allied armies moved east, so did the 23rd, and it eventually was based in Luxembourg, from where it engaged in deceptions of crossings of the Ruhr river, positions along the Maginot Line, Hürtgen Forest, and finally, a major crossing of the Rhine to draw German troops away from the actual sites.
Ghost soldiers were encouraged to use their brains and talent to mislead, deceive, and befuddle the German Army. Many were recruited from art schools, advertising agencies, and other occupations that encouraged creative thinking. In civilian life, ghost soldiers had been artists, architects, actors, set designers, and engineers.
Although the 23rd consisted of only 1,100 soldiers, the contingent used equipment pioneered by British forces such as dummy tanks and artillery, fake aircraft, and giant speakers broadcasting the sounds of men and artillery to make the Germans think it was upwards of a two-division 30,000-man force. The unit’s elaborate ruses helped deflect German units from the locations of larger allied combat units.
Thanks for reading, leave your thought in the comment section below.
Comments
Post a Comment