Photographers > David McLellan
(23) L.473 - French & British soldiers having their wounds dressed on an ambulance train in France
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| First World War 'Official Photographs' > Photographers > David McLellan > (23) L.473 - French & British soldiers having their wounds dressed on an ambulance train in France |
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| Permanent URL | https://digital.nls.uk/74548600 |
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| Description | Nurse and orderly attending two wounded soldiers, France, during World War I. Although the original caption claims this scene is occurring on a train, there seems to be an awful lot of heavy tiling and plumbed-in taps on the walls. The room itself is also quite large. There are train-style roller blinds on the windows though. The sister, with the aid of a soldier orderly, is bandaging a soldiers hand. He is chatting with his comrade who looks as if he has received attention for his head. It was after the battle of Marne in September 1916 that the inefficiency of caring for the wounded became clear. There was new weapons technology, such as the machine gun, which resulted in huge numbers of casualties, many of which were left on the battlefield at Marne. They were eventually cared for by locals, which shocked both the public and authorities. After this volunteer ambulance corps and medical staff were organised. [Original reads: 'OFFICIAL PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN ON THE BRITISH WESTERN FRONT IN FRANCE. French & British soldiers having their wounds dressed on an ambulance train in France.'] |
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| Description | Formerly a photographer with the 'Daily Mirror’, a newspaper which led the field in pictorial journalism, McLellan was appointed as an official war photographer in December 1917 along with Tom Aitken whose work also features in this collection. McLellan is especially noted for his work capturing the huge scale of operations on the Front. McLellan was one of five official photographers working on the Western Front, for the propaganda department during the last two years of the war. The photographers were driven to the site the authorities wanted them to photograph, which meant that most of their material was also largely censored. This did not, however, mean that the photographer did not get to know the people in the picture. |
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| Description | Photographs by named photographers. |
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| Description | Black-and-white photographs mainly of the Western Front during the First World War. Official British war photographers took many of them for propaganda purposes. Unless otherwise stated, titles are the photographs' original captions. From the papers of Field Marshal (Earl) Haig (1861-1928). The Haig Papers also contain Douglas Haig’s diaries. |
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| Shelfmark | Acc.3155 |
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