Photographers > Tom Aitken
(47) N.458 - Part of the church at Bethune
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 > (47) N.458 - Part of the church at Bethune |
|---|
| Permanent URL | https://digital.nls.uk/74549074 |
|---|---|
| Description | British soldier surveying the ruined church at Bethune, France, during World War I. Standing underneath a doorway, this lone British soldier looks upon the devastation wrought on the church at Bethune, in Picardie. The church must have been hit by a great number of artillery shells for so much rubble to have fallen to the ground. With its railway links to the Channel ports, Bethune was a crucial link in the Allied war plans. Capturing the town was one of the main aims of the German Spring Offensive in April 1918. This massive attack was on the verge of succeeding, until a last-gasp counter-attack by a British unit kept the town in Allied hands. However, Bethune suffered terrible damage as a result of this heavy fighting. [Original reads: 'OFFICIAL PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN ON THE BRITISH WESTERN FRONT IN FRANCE. Part of the church at Bethune.'] |
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
|
|