Photographers > David McLellan
(89) L.633 - These birds have lost a leg but managed to get through with their messages
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' > Photographers > David McLellan > (89) L.633 - These birds have lost a leg but managed to get through with their messages |
|---|
| Permanent URL | https://digital.nls.uk/74548782 |
|---|---|
| Description | This shows inside the corner of a corrugated iron shed. Two pigeons are standing on perches and a third bird is sitting in a roost. Both of the standing birds are missing a leg. The army horses, messenger dogs and carrier pigeons were very vulnerable, not only to enemy fire, but also to gas and to disease. It seems odd that, in the middle of the carnage in which so many men died, wounded pigeons were being treated. However, they could still be used for breeding and were, therefore, a valuable resource. [Original reads: 'OFFICIAL PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN ON THE BRITISH WESTERN FRONT IN FRANCE. British army carrier pigeons in France. Hospital for wounded carrier pigeons in France. These birds have lost a leg but managed to get through with their messages.'] |
More information
|
|
| 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. |
|---|---|
|
More information
|
|
| Description | Photographs by named photographers. |
|---|
| 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
|
|