Cavalry
(31) D.1288 - Cavalry Officers in their bivouacs behind the line
Thumbnail gallery: Grid view | List view
Universal Viewer | 
Mirador | Large image
Images and transcriptions on this page, including medium image downloads, may be used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence unless otherwise stated. 
| First World War 'Official Photographs' > Cavalry > (31) D.1288 - Cavalry Officers in their bivouacs behind the line |
|---|
| Permanent URL | https://digital.nls.uk/74548092 |
|---|---|
| Description | As this image contains eight cavalry officers, the photographer - John Warwick Brooke - was very much capturing a part of the army that was rapidly becoming defunct, as the sudden move to mechanised warfare took over from the older and more traditional forms of warfare. Although the officer at the front right of the group is wearing his riding boots, the rest of the men are wearing shoes and puttees. Up until 1914, the main strategy of a cavalry attack was to force a hole in the opposing lines, into which the cavalry would gallop and create havoc behind the enemy lines. Faced with a combined defence of machine-guns, artillery fire, barbed wire and concentrated rifle fire, it became clear that a cavalry attack on the Western Front after 1914 was absolute madness. After this became apparent to the generals, many cavalrymen dismounted and fought in the trenches as infantrymen or in the air as pilots. [Original reads: 'OFFICIAL PHOTOGRAPHS TAKEN ON THE BRITISH WESTERN FRONT. Cavalry Officers in their bivouacs behind the line.'] |
More information
|
|
| Description | Photographs depicting cavalry. |
|---|---|
|
More information
|
|
| 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. |
|---|---|
| Shelfmark | Acc.3155 |
|
More information
|
|