Photographers > Tom Aitken
(2) N.373 - Message bearers coming down a shell shattered road
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| First World War 'Official Photographs' > Photographers > Tom Aitken > (2) N.373 - Message bearers coming down a shell shattered road |
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| Permanent URL | https://digital.nls.uk/74548982 |
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| Description | With dead animals (possibly horses) and shot-off branches lying on the road, these two message carriers could be forgiven for thinking that they were travelling on the road to Hell. The small holdalls on the men’s chests would have been used for carrying messages between units. Looking closely at the trees, it is possible to see the marks left by the branches before they were shot off by gunfire. As developments of Continuous Wave (CW), wireless and 'spark’ or 'loop’ radio sets continued, the need for soldier messengers grew less important. However, it was not until 1918 that the standard of army communications moved away from soldier messengers and pigeons. With the onset of radio communications, units on the battlefield could communicate quickly and easily, without having to send out valuable men as messengers. For the Allies, The Battle of Hamel in 1918 represented a major turning point, in that a faster and more efficient communication system was central to winning this battle. [Original reads: 'OFFICIAL PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN ON THE BRITISH WESTERN FRONT IN FRANCE. Message bearers coming down a shell shattered road.'] |
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| Description | Tom Aitken was a newspaper photographer from Glasgow who was assigned in December 1917 as a war photographer along with David McLellan and Armando Consolé. McLellan's work also features in the National Library of Scotland’s Haig Papers. War photographers held a hybrid position during World War I, being part of yet not ultimately responsible to the military. |
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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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