Leaders
Hindenburg, in Austrian uniform.
Schlieffen.
Ludendorff, wearing the Grand Cross of the Iron Cross.
The Kaiser distributing Iron Crosses, Warsaw, September 1915.
Conrad von Hötzendorf.
Joffre and Haig at GQG, Chantilly, 23 December 1915.
Pétain; behind him Joffre, Foch, Haig and Pershing.
Brusilov.
Kemal Ataturk (encircled) at Gallipoli.
Mobilisation
The Guard Pioneer Battalion leaves Berlin, August 1914.
A Russian reservist bids farewell.
French infantrymen off to the front.
The Campaign in the West, 1914
Belgian infantry await the invader, Louvain, 20 August 1914.
Machine-gun section of a French infantry regiment.
French 75mm battery in action, Varreddes, 13 September 1914.
The Campaign in the East
German infantrymen of the 147th Regiment advancing in open order before Tannenberg. The regiment, later ‘von Hindenburg’s’, was local.
Russian transport on the road to Przemsyl. September 1914.
Trench Warfare
Soldiers of the French 87th Regiment, 6th Division, at Côte 304, Verdun, 1916.
The 1st Lancashire Fusiliers in a communication trench at Beaumont Hamel, Somme, late June 1916.
A Grenadier Guards trench sentry, Somme, 1916.
A working party of the Manchester Regiment going up the line, Serre, March 1917, before the battle of Arras.
Passchendaele
A water cart bogged beside a brushwood track, St Eloi, 11 August 1917.
Australians on a duckboard track, Chateau Wood, Ypres, 29 October 1917.
Serbia and Italy
Serbian headquarters crossing the Sizir bridge, Albania, October, 1915.
Austrian mountain gunners firing a 70mm M8 howitzer.
Austrain mountain machine-gun section, Italy, 1917.
Weapons of war
French 75mm field gun with limber and team.
Austrain 305mm howitzer at Siemakowce, Galicia, 1915.
British Vickers machine-gun crew.
A Royal Engineers Signal Service visual signalling post, at Neuville-Vitasse, Battle of Arras, 29 April 1917.
German infantry training with an A7V tank, 15 April 1918.
The Western Front, 1918
German infantry in a communications trench, Third German Offensive, May 1918.
Breaking the Hindenburg Line: British infantry moving up, 29 September 1918
Breaking the Hindenburg Line: British Mark IV tanks going forward, 29 September 1918.
American infantry advancing, autumn 1918.
Gallipoli
Turkish gunners in action with Krupp 77mm gun
Australians and the Royal Naval Division share a trench.
Wounded ANZAC coming down, relacements waiting to go up, a repeated Gallipoli scene.
The War in Africa
Von Lettow-Vorbeck.
SMS Seeadler leaving Dar-es-Salaam for Germany, 1914; the band of the Schutztruppen in the foreground.
The War at Sea
The Grand Fleet in the North Sea, 4th Battle Squadron (Iron Duke, Royal Oak, Superb, Canada) in the foreground.
The torpedo room of a U—boat.
SMS Blücher sinking at the Battle of Dogger Bank, 24 January 1915.
American armed merchant ship Covington, sinking off Brest, 2 July 1918, after torpedoing by U—86.
The battlecruiser Invincible, broken in half by internal explosion, Battle of Jutland, May 1916; H.M. Destroyer Badger approaching to pick up the six survivors.
The War in the Air
Fokker triplanes; Richthofen, Germany’s leading ace, scored many of his victories in this machine.
A Sopwith Camel, Noyelles-sur-l’Escaut, 8 October 1918; a highly manoeuvrable fighter, its rotary engine made it difficult to handle on take-off and landing.
A squadron equipped with the SE 5a, the most successful British fighter of the final period of air fighting.
Armistice
Above: A French soldier welcomed in the liberated zone.
Below: A Hessian regiment marching back across the Rhine at Coblenz, November 1918, displaying the Grand Ducal instead of Imperial colours.
War’s Aftermath
A burial party at Windmill Cemetery, Monchy-le-Preux, begun for soldiers killed in the Battle of Arras, April 1917.
Tyne Cot Cemetery, Passchendaele, today. The largest of the Commonwealth war cemeteries, it contains the bodies of 12,000 soldiers killed in the Third Battle of Ypres and commemorates 35,000 whose bodies were not found.