Photographers > David McLellan
(94) L.640 - Franco-British carrier pigeon which makes long distance flights
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| First World War 'Official Photographs' > Photographers > David McLellan > (94) L.640 - Franco-British carrier pigeon which makes long distance flights |
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| Permanent URL | https://digital.nls.uk/74548778 |
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| Description | French pigeon trainer, France, during World War I. This photograph shows a French Army officer holding a carrier pigeon ready to fly. Below the rank chevrons on his sleeve he is wearing a badge of a flying pigeon, showing he was a pigeon trainer. He has the weather-beaten skin of a countryman. On September 11, 1914, the French gave 15 pigeons to the British Intelligence Service. By 1918 there were some 20,000 birds and 380 expert pigeon trainers in the British Army alone. [Original reads: 'OFFICIAL PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN ON THE BRITISH WESTERN FRONT IN FRANCE. British army carrier pigeons in France. A Franco-British carrier pigeon which makes long distance flights.'] |
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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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