Photographers > Tom Aitken
(31) N.424 - Incident in a big football match near the line between British and French Tommies
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| First World War 'Official Photographs' > Photographers > Tom Aitken > (31) N.424 - Incident in a big football match near the line between British and French Tommies |
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| Permanent URL | https://digital.nls.uk/74549042 |
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| Description | Football match between British and French soldiers, in France, during World War I. With a large group of French troops watching from the touchline, this image captures an exciting moment in a football match between French and British soldiers. Sporting matches such as this were very popular with the troops, as they interrupted the boredom of normal army life and also helped to raise morale. One of the most surreal games of football ever played took place near the village of Laventie on Christmas Day 1915. After singing carols on Christmas Eve and exchanging festive greetings between the trenches on Christmas morning, British and German troops went over the top of their trenches to meet - rather than to kill - one another. A sudden salvo from the British artillery broke the spell completely. [Original reads: 'OFFICIAL PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN ON THE BRITISH WESTERN FRONT IN FRANCE. An incident in a big football match near the line between British and French Tommies. British in black and white jerseys.'] |
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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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