Photographers > Tom Aitken
(3) N.374 - Stretcher bearers moving hurriedly along a shell shattered road in the fighting area
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 > Tom Aitken > (3) N.374 - Stretcher bearers moving hurriedly along a shell shattered road in the fighting area |
|---|
| Permanent URL | https://digital.nls.uk/74548984 |
|---|---|
| Description | Stretcher-bearer and medics walking along a shell-damaged road, France. Two medics and a stretcher-bearer walking briskly to the front line. Up ahead on the dirt road, a unit of soldiers can be seen marching. Looking closely at the trees, it is possible to see the marks left by the branches before they were shot off by gunfire. Some shot-off branches can be seen lying at the side of the road. There were only four stretcher-bearers assigned to one company (about 120 men). If the underfoot conditions were good, two men could carry a wounded soldier on a stretcher. In muddy and rainy conditions, however, it took four men to lift a stretcher. The stretcher-hearers carried wounded men to a regimental first aid post in the reserve trenches. After receiving treatment there, he would then be taken to a Casualty Clearing Station for surgery, before being transferred to a proper military hospital. [Original reads: 'OFFICIAL PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN ON THE BRITISH WESTERN FRONT IN FRANCE. Stretcher bearers moving hurriedly along a shell shattered road in the fighting area.'] |
More information
|
|
| 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. |
|---|---|
|
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
|
|