11/11/09 What we call Veteran’s Day nowadays used to be Armistice Day because the Armistice ending WWI was signed by the Germans on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918.  Here is a famous image from the First World War.  You may have seen it before. I know it’s been the cover of several books.  I suppose it is used so often because it graphically shows the utter desolation of the Western Front.  The landscape has been destroyed by relentless artillery shelling.  It looks like a Gustave Doré engraving of Hell.  It was taken during the Battle of Passchendaele, a six month long battle of attrition fought in a muddy marshland which soldiers frequently drowned in.  They drowned in mud.  Even by the standards of The Great War, Passchendaele was particularly stupid and wasteful of human lives.  By the time it ended, the Allies had captured a meager 5 miles of new territory at a cost of 140,000 killed, a ratio of roughly 2 inches gained per dead soldier and the Germans recaptured their lost ground, without resistance, 5 months later.

The photographer who took this image was an Australian named Frank Hurley. Before coming to Europe to photograph the Australian Imperial Forces in combat, he’d already been a part of some famous adventures. He was the official photog for the doomed Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition led by Ernest Shackleton. Their ship, the HMS Endurance, became caught and was later crushed by the pack ice. Before it sank, Hurley chose his best 150 out of 550 plates – the maximum that could be carried – and smashed the rest. That’s what I call photo editing under pressure. The crew was marooned on floating pack ice and later on a tiny uninhabited island for months before rescue.

Btw, Amazon has a used copy of a book of his photographs entitled Frank Hurley: A Photographer’s Life for sale for a mere $251.00 if anyone is looking for something to get me for Christmas. 

[Photo notes: Soldiers of an Australian 4th Division field artillery brigade on a duckboard track passing through Chateau Wood, near Hooge in the Ypres salient, 29 October 1917. The leading soldier is Gunner James Fulton and the second soldier is Lieutenant Anthony Devine. The men belong to a battery of the 10th Field Artillery Brigade. Photo by Frank Hurley. Australian War Memorial collection number E01220.]