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00:00This is the extraordinary, untold story of soldiers' photography in the First World War.
00:11These might look like professional photos,
00:14but they were all taken by ordinary British and German soldiers.
00:18On personal cameras, they took with them to war.
00:23Today, much of our understanding of what the war looked like
00:27comes from reconstructed battle scenes
00:30and iconic yet impersonal official photographs, like this one.
00:36But by exploring the personal photos taken by the soldiers themselves,
00:40many never seen before in public,
00:43we'll present a new and unexpected picture of the frontline experience.
00:50This is World War I, viewed from the perspective of the men who fought in it.
00:56Looking into the eyes of these men, almost to see what they were thinking.
01:01What's going to happen to them?
01:03It's that connection with another human being
01:06through the medium of that photograph, which is extremely important in my view.
01:11We'll find out how the effects of war were reflected in the photos the soldiers took.
01:16War is an adventure for a young boy.
01:22But I think when he made this picture, he was no boy anymore.
01:27He was a man.
01:29And with no veterans alive to tell the tale,
01:33we'll join the relatives of some of these men
01:35as they go in search of the stories hidden within their ancestors' photographs.
01:39From the pictures we have, this does seem that this is the last picture
01:45that your grandfather took, not only on the Somme but during the Great War.
01:51Now, we reveal for the first time the secret history of amateur photography
01:56in the First World War, and of the men behind the cameras.
02:03The First World War was a bloody and brutal conflict.
02:16But when it began in August 1914,
02:19it was, to many, a time of great excitement.
02:24For the soldiers of Britain's regular army,
02:26and the tens of thousands of idealistic new recruits
02:29who volunteered to fight, war seemed like a great adventure.
02:34A chance to join friends and colleagues
02:35in a once-in-a-lifetime trip overseas.
02:39To give the Germans a bloody nose,
02:41and to return victorious.
02:46And as a wave of patriotism swept across the country,
02:49many were determined to record their part in history in photographs,
02:53both as a personal reminder
02:55and as a souvenir to show family and friends when they returned.
03:00Few were prepared for the horrors to come.
03:07By the outbreak of war,
03:08amateur photography was already a popular pastime in Britain.
03:12The launch of the five-shilling Kodak box brownie in 1901
03:16had made cameras affordable to the masses.
03:19So by 1914,
03:20many people were in the habit of preserving their memories
03:22with an informal snapshot.
03:24But it was the introduction of a new and sophisticated folding model
03:29in 1912 that really paved the way for soldiers' photography
03:33in the First World War.
03:35Now, this little camera was one of the most popular cameras of the time.
03:42Indeed, it became so popular with soldiers
03:44that it became known as the soldier's Kodak.
03:48It was called the vest pocket Kodak,
03:50vest being the American name for a waistcoat.
03:52And it was designed to be small enough to slip into a waistcoat pocket
03:55or, of course, the tunic pocket of your jacket.
04:00When a soldier wanted to take a photograph,
04:02this is what they would have to do.
04:04Firstly, they would have to pull out the lens panel.
04:07On the front, you have settings
04:08where you can change the shutter speed and the aperture,
04:11depending on how bright the day was.
04:14You could either have 1 50th of a second for a bright sunny day
04:17or 1 25th if it was a bit more cloudy.
04:20You would choose the setting and then you could change the aperture
04:23from a distant landscape through to a portrait setting.
04:27And then take the photograph looking down into the viewfinder.
04:35The vest pocket Kodak, known as the VPK,
04:38wasn't the only folding camera available,
04:40but it was the most popular.
04:43Within a year, over 30,000 had been sold in Britain.
04:47At 30 shillings apiece,
04:49four times the weekly wage of an ordinary soldier,
04:52it wasn't cheap,
04:53so most sales were made to officers rather than privates.
04:58Given the camera's popularity,
05:00it's a mystery that so little is known
05:01about the photographs the soldiers took with them.
05:05But in time, many of these men
05:07would want to forget the horrors they'd seen.
05:10So pictures and albums were shut away
05:12in cupboards and attics
05:14and eventually forgotten.
05:17One private soldier who did take a vest pocket camera to war
05:25was William Smallcombe,
05:27who volunteered for the 12th Battalion
05:29of the Gloucestershire Regiment in 1914.
05:33The photographs he took
05:34have been handed down to his grandson, Michael,
05:37himself a professional photographer.
05:40This is a picture of my grandfather, which I took.
05:46He was about, um, 90...
05:48in his mid-90s.
05:50He lived at our house.
05:51Um, William Albert Smallcombe,
05:53looking very dapper there, I think.
05:56William died in 1992.
05:58And although Michael had seen his grandfather's photographs before,
06:02he didn't know much about them,
06:04because William rarely spoke about the war.
06:07These are the small emprints,
06:11which, uh, come from the camera.
06:15They're tiny, they're differently exposed,
06:17and actually quite difficult to see what's in a lot of them.
06:22This is, um, William with his machine gun.
06:28And I imagine, you know,
06:30if you have a machine gun,
06:32you point it at people,
06:33and some of them fall over.
06:35So, that's what he did,
06:37and it would never talk about.
06:42You could see that what interested him were his friends,
06:45but it's, uh, it's very poignant that you know
06:48that a lot of these people
06:50who are with your grandfather,
06:52who you knew,
06:53did never, never came back.
07:00I mean, I'd like to know more about these pictures
07:02and where they were photographed.
07:06Places have a spirit, I think, probably,
07:08which comes from the experience of whatever happened there.
07:12Um, and I'd like to, you know, experience that,
07:17to find it.
07:20Like many soldiers' photo collections,
07:23the secrets to William's story
07:25may be hidden in the pictures he took.
07:27So it's shocking to discover
07:29that countless numbers of soldiers' photos
07:31have ended up as landfill,
07:33thrown away, unwanted,
07:36as the generation of veterans who took them
07:38began to pass away.
07:40One man who salvaged some of it is ex-dustman Bob Smithhurst,
07:49who worked on the bins in Linfield in Sussex.
07:53Six of Bob's ancestors died in the war,
07:56so it's always been a subject close to his heart.
07:59This is all the, um, stuff, or some of the stuff,
08:04I picked up over the years of being on the refuge.
08:08And rescued, I suppose, in a sense.
08:11Um, from a military medal to photographs.
08:15Uh, some of my colleagues thought I was totally mad.
08:18But I said that about a colleague who collected fishing tackle,
08:22and I thought he was mad.
08:25And this is just a part of the stuff
08:27that was thrown away over 36 years
08:29when I was a refuge collector.
08:31Bob began his World War I photo collection in the 1970s,
08:37in the days before black plastic bin bags,
08:40when dustman could see the rubbish
08:42they'd tipped into the back of the dust cart.
08:44In them days, he used to carry the rubbish on his shoulders,
08:48and therefore, when we emptied the bins,
08:50he used to see the paperwork coming out.
08:53And, um...
08:54But the photographs, you know,
08:55you didn't find them all the time,
08:57because, I mean, the only time he was aware of some
08:59is when they start to be mashed up in the back.
09:04Bob's most treasured find
09:05is a large collection of amateur photos taken in 1914
09:09by a soldier in the London Scottish Regiment.
09:12Rare, because they're the only known photographs of the battalion
09:16before their first action in October that year.
09:20This is Sergeant Haig,
09:22the 14th London Scottish who took the photographs.
09:26And then there's a photograph here
09:28of German prisoners,
09:30and you can actually see him taking the shadow of him
09:32taking the photograph in the picture.
09:35I mean, all I am is a custodian of this stuff
09:38for future generations,
09:40because if we threw it all away,
09:42this stuff perishes.
09:44And, um...
09:46We'd be like the Romans.
09:47You'd be digging up in years' time, like,
09:49you know, doing that,
09:50but I thought it was saving the trouble by collecting it now.
09:53Although many albums and photographs have been lost forever,
09:58there are families who cherish the images
10:00taken by previous generations.
10:04Fred Davidson was a 25-year-old doctor
10:06in the 1st Battalion of the Cameronians,
10:09and amongst the first wave of soldiers
10:11to take a camera to war.
10:14The albums he made were left to his grandson, Andrew,
10:17and he's just spent a year painstakingly
10:20researching his grandfather's story.
10:23For me, this was a very personal project,
10:25because I had the albums, but I knew nothing about the man.
10:28He died two days after I was born.
10:32But what he kept were these three photo albums,
10:35and I think they obviously meant a lot to him,
10:39because they covered an extraordinary period of his life.
10:45Fred set sail for France with Britain's regular army,
10:48the British Expeditionary Force,
10:50on the 13th of August, 1914,
10:52just over a week after the war had begun.
10:57The first photograph of my grandfather at war
11:00is taken on the boat, the SS Caledonia,
11:02that took them across from Southampton to Le Havre.
11:06They look like they're three or four guys having fun.
11:09One of them's dangling a camera,
11:11and they're taking photos of each other
11:14in full knowledge that they are creating a pastiche
11:17of if they're going on a cruise,
11:19which is extraordinary to think of
11:21when we know what happened after.
11:25The battalion arrived at the French port of Le Havre
11:27on the 15th of August.
11:29This photograph of their disembarkation
11:32was taken by Fred's good friend,
11:34machine gun officer Robert Money.
11:42Within days,
11:43the men of the British Expeditionary Force
11:45were heading towards the Belgian town of Mons,
11:47in search of the German army.
11:50But by the 24th of the month,
11:52they were in full retreat,
11:54overwhelmed by enemy forces.
11:56Robert Money was one of the few British soldiers
11:59to take photographs during this time.
12:03There's a terrific photo of the men resting
12:07when they're being chased back by the Germans,
12:10and they're all sprawled out on the grass.
12:12And you can see Robertson, the commanding officer,
12:15sitting cross-legged, cigarette in his mouth,
12:18looking dazed straight at the camera.
12:20Beside him, his number two, Vandeleur,
12:23has got binoculars pointing up at the sky.
12:26They're looking at the German plane that follows them
12:28every mile they march.
12:33After a few weeks on the move,
12:35the battalion entered hastily dug trenches,
12:38initially here, near the tiny French village of La Boutellerie,
12:42close to the Belgian border.
12:46And as the war settled into a deadly battle of attrition,
12:49Fred and Robert Money began to document their experiences.
12:55At that time, Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener,
12:59had banned the press from following the movements of the BEF.
13:02So soldiers' photographs provide the only visual record
13:06of the British front line during this period of the war.
13:11There's a lot of mud, there's a lot of guns.
13:14You're starting to feel that there's real fighting going on,
13:18not just a retreat.
13:21Some of my favourite photos are the group shops
13:24where you can see my grandfather's assembled fellow officers,
13:28almost like a football team.
13:31And I think these are remarkable photos
13:33because by this stage, although they're on the front line,
13:36everyone is buying into the idea of a group photo.
13:40They want to be seen together, they want to remember each other,
13:43they want this to remind them of what they went through.
13:48In those first few months of the war,
13:50photographers like Fred Davidson and Robert Money
13:53were making up the rules of war photography as they went along.
13:58However, one enthusiastic soldier drew up a set of simple guidelines.
14:02Later published in Amateur Photographer magazine,
14:06which suggested a little common sense was all that was required.
14:10It's an article written by Medico,
14:13somebody who'd been invalided back from the front.
14:16And it's called,
14:17Photography at the Front, Some Practical Notes by One Who Has Been There.
14:21It starts off here.
14:23Don't flourish your camera in the faces of generals.
14:27Cameras are not popular at the front,
14:29and you might find yourself minus your camera.
14:32Don't use all your film on the voyage out.
14:35Save some of it for later.
14:37You might get better ones.
14:39This temptation, it was so exciting that you would use all your film
14:42before you even landed in France.
14:44And lastly here,
14:46don't take a photograph that could be of help to the enemy.
14:49If you were captured,
14:51would you have photographs that could aid them?
14:57Unfortunately,
14:58by the time the article was published in March 1915,
15:01the rules had changed.
15:03That's because some soldiers' photos
15:06had begun to appear uncensored in the papers back home.
15:09Like this one of Robert Money's,
15:11which was published in The War Illustrated in November 1914.
15:17It's not known how much Robert Money was paid for the image,
15:21but the market for soldiers' photographs
15:23was beginning to open up.
15:25And when the authorities found out,
15:27they acted immediately.
15:29Now, Sir John French, the Commander-in-Chief,
15:31knows that something has to be done.
15:33And on the 22nd of December 1914,
15:36he issues a general routine order, 464,
15:39saying that photographs were no longer permitted.
15:43Now, the problem with the GRO is that it's a local fix,
15:46local to the Western Front.
15:48No officer or other rank about to embark for France
15:50would have been aware of that ban.
15:54But despite the ban,
15:56Fred Davidson and Robert Money,
15:58photographed here together,
16:00continued to document their war.
16:03It's about control.
16:05That being in this war,
16:07especially after the retreat,
16:09there was a feeling amongst a lot of the soldiers
16:11that they'd lost control.
16:13You know, that every decision is made for them by the army,
16:16and some of those decisions aren't very good.
16:18Even the officers felt that.
16:20In taking photos,
16:21they're almost reasserting their own control over certain things.
16:24They are choosing what they remember.
16:26They are choosing to do something
16:28that the army doesn't want them to do,
16:30and they don't care.
16:31They don't care.
16:34In Germany,
16:35the High Command took a different view of photography.
16:38When war was declared,
16:40Kaiser Wilhelm immediately appointed 19 court photographers
16:44to document what was expected to be a swift and decisive victory.
16:49And for even the lowliest private soldier,
16:53recording the war through photographs
16:55was regarded not only as an enjoyable pastime,
16:58but also a patriotic duty.
17:01If you get into the whole story of amateur photography from World War I,
17:06you get astonished about the gigantic amount of pictures which were produced.
17:13Photography for soldiers were not forbidden.
17:18It was not forbidden.
17:19They had to ask their next lieutenant or something like,
17:23if they were allowed to take pictures.
17:25But I think if you think about the order in these trenches,
17:30nobody asked these questions
17:32because everybody was interested in photographs.
17:36Within weeks of arriving at the front,
17:38many soldiers rode home asking for a camera to be sent out.
17:42Such was the demand for cameras
17:45that nationwide schemes were set up by photography enthusiasts
17:48to ensure there were enough available.
17:51One of these actions we know
17:54is from the German Photography Society.
17:57They asked their members to take cameras
18:03which were lying around at home
18:05and send them to soldiers for recording this world history.
18:12One of those who would write home for his camera
18:14was Walter Kleinfeld,
18:16a boy soldier with a keen interest in photography.
18:19My father was 16 years old,
18:22when he called himself free-willig.
18:23When he was young,
18:24when he was young,
18:25he had to tell his mother
18:33that he could be taken away from the floor.
18:36He was at the front of his mother
18:38because he was young,
18:39he had to tell his mother
18:40that he could have a camera
18:42Like his father, Volkmar Kleinfeld has been taking photographs
19:11since he was a boy, and for over 40 years has run this photography shop in the German
19:18town of TĂĽbingen, a business first set up by his father in the late 1920s.
19:27Volkmar doesn't remember much about his dad, because he died when he was still a child.
19:34For many years, this home movie footage of them together in the 1930s was, along with
19:40his father's old war diaries, the only reminder.
19:49The photographs Volter took during the war were thought to have been lost.
19:54But then, just three years ago, Volkmar found a box containing over 120 glass plates,
20:00stored in his father's archives.
20:02This is the first time the images have been seen in public.
20:07Volkmar Kleinfeld has been made by my father's books, which he made in young years.
20:15And this Diapositive 126 on the number of pages are of course for me a great fundus.
20:24Volkmar showed the images to photography historian Dr Ulrich Hegeler.
20:43Volkmar Kleinfeld and I saw it immediately that these pictures are very special.
20:50Really special and really extraordinary.
20:55Walter Kleinfeld was 16, 17 years, but he has a view of a photographer, of an old photographer,
21:02of a reporting photographer.
21:03And I think perhaps it was the easiest way for him to record the war and for him and for his family,
21:14that they know at home what war is.
21:22Meanwhile, back in the British lines, it had been just three days since the ban on photography
21:27was introduced when an extraordinary event occurred which would seriously undermine the military authorities.
21:36On Christmas Day, 1914, along much of the 30 mile front line south of Ypres,
21:42there was an unofficial truce as friend and foe put down their rifles,
21:47climbed out of their trenches and met in no man's land.
21:51And over the next few hours, Tommy and Jerry shook hands, exchanged gifts and significantly photographed the event.
22:04In fact, if it weren't for the soldiers' photographs, no visual record of the Christmas truce would exist today.
22:12Letters and diaries tell us of the extraordinary events of that day,
22:16but it's the actual photographs that prove that that fraternisation took place.
22:22Images of British officers and other ranks intermingling happily with the enemy
22:26are some of the most extraordinary documents of our time.
22:30Would the Christmas truce be remembered as it is today were it not for those photographs?
22:37I doubt it.
22:40On the 8th of January, 1915, photos of the event made the front pages.
22:46It was the last thing the authorities wanted.
22:52These pictures caused a sensation in the British press.
22:55The government knew it was vital to keep the public full square behind the war effort.
23:01All of a sudden, people were going to look at these photographs and think,
23:04these people are not really any different from us, except for the colour of their uniform.
23:09But the images of the Christmas truce only fuelled the demand for soldiers' photos.
23:14And soon, British newspapers, which were red at the front,
23:18started to run competitions, offering vast sums of money for the best photographs.
23:23There was a fear that soldiers would take their eye off the ball,
23:27that they would load, aim and shoot their cameras,
23:30as opposed to their revolvers and rifles.
23:33So it was critical that the government stood on this,
23:38what was effectively a press frenzy at that time.
23:41And on the 16th of March, 1915, they introduced a war office instruction
23:46that banned cameras completely.
23:49You would not be allowed to take photographs,
23:51you would not be allowed to take a camera overseas,
23:53you would not be allowed to have contact with the press.
23:57It finished photography in their minds at that point.
24:01Anyone caught breaking the rules faced court-martial,
24:05as some discovered to their cost.
24:08One individual, Private Ernest Mullis of the Gloucester Regiment,
24:11was caught with a camera in November 1915.
24:14He was given three months imprisonment with hard labour.
24:21Whether Fred Davidson would have obeyed the new ban is unknown,
24:25because on the 13th of March, three days before it was introduced,
24:29he was shot in no man's land,
24:31as he went over the top to help a wounded colleague.
24:37Although he was badly injured,
24:38Fred survived and was sent home to England to recover.
24:41From his hospital bed in Folkestone,
24:45he took perhaps his most important photograph of the war.
24:50When he wakes up, he takes a photograph.
24:53The first photograph he takes when he recovers is of a beautiful nurse
24:57sitting at the end of the bed, reading a magazine,
24:59with a pot of pheasant-eyed daffodils and the sun streaming in.
25:02It is so different to what he's been photographing and where he's been,
25:08and you really feel that difference.
25:09And that's my favourite photo, because that nurse turned out to be my grandmother.
25:13You know, they ended up having a love affair and later married.
25:17So, for my family, that is a photo that means everything,
25:21and is really why we're here.
25:32Meanwhile, on the Western Front,
25:34the new ban on photography was being taken seriously,
25:38and soldiers with cameras were hastily sending them home.
25:4322-year-old Robin Gibbon Moneypenny was a second lieutenant in the Essex Regiment,
25:49and had taken his camera to war.
25:51When the ban was introduced, he wrote home urgently to his aunt Ethel,
25:55whom he lived with in England.
25:56Today, his daughter, Sheila, still has his letters.
26:03There is a letter here dated March 26, 1915.
26:07It is from my father to my dear aunt Ethel.
26:12Many thanks so much for your letters,
26:14and for the parcel of food and the underclothes,
26:18both of which I found on my arrival in billets this time.
26:22By the by, I am sending my camera home,
26:25as a strict order has just been issued,
26:28that no officers are to have them.
26:30Any we've got, we must send home.
26:32Let me know when you get it.
26:35As she did get it, because, amazingly, we still have that camera here.
26:40The camera that my father actually took to France.
26:43And this is the camera.
26:46The VPK.
26:49It was called VPK, wasn't it?
26:51Because I remember that name.
26:52It looks to me quite a heavy one.
26:54It opens out.
26:56Ah, that's right, that looks familiar, yes.
26:58It's really lovely to have it still.
27:00After all these years, it's still with us.
27:10The negatives that Robin Gibbon Moneypenny took
27:12with his vest pocket camera
27:14have only recently been discovered by the family,
27:17left undeveloped in an envelope.
27:21When they were processed, this is what they revealed.
27:24Sheila doesn't know why her father didn't want to see his photographs.
27:33But to her, they're a fascinating insight into his war.
27:41It was extremely interesting to see them.
27:43It made it all become even more vivid and alive,
27:47actually see the photographs taken on the spot.
27:52They're a remarkable record of his time in the war.
27:56In the spring of 1915,
28:06many territorial battalions were preparing to leave Britain
28:09for the Western Front.
28:11These part-time volunteer soldiers were needed urgently
28:14to bolster the heavily depleted expeditionary force.
28:18And despite the risk of court-martial,
28:21some men still took cameras with them.
28:26Among them was Harry Culver,
28:28a second lieutenant in the 1st 5th Battalion
28:31of the York and Lancaster Regiment.
28:32This is him, caught on camera shortly before leaving for France.
28:40Historian John Cooksey has spent years researching the story
28:44behind his photographs.
28:46What we have here is a record of the experiences of a unit,
28:52a territorial unit, in the First World War,
28:55and of one man's desire to capture every single second of that.
29:00The battalion arrived in France on the 14th of April
29:05and was dispatched to trenches near the village of Fleurbet.
29:10Once there, Harry Culver began to document their daily life
29:14in a collection of both informal and artistically posed photographs.
29:19Photos of such clarity and invention,
29:22they rank amongst some of the best soldiers' pictures of the war.
29:27He's obviously got an eye for composition.
29:29He arranges the men quite purposefully into various poses,
29:34and he fills the frame with these men.
29:37He doesn't just want to record what they're doing,
29:41he wants to record it in an artistic fashion,
29:44and I think that comes through very, very strongly
29:46on many of the photographs.
29:47Culver photographed all ranks,
29:57from the private soldiers who reported to him,
30:00to his fellow junior officers.
30:03He even photographed his commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Fox,
30:08sitting him alongside the privates, revealing the informality that often existed amongst these
30:13part-time volunteer soldiers, something that was rarely seen in the regular army.
30:21So it actually shows almost the equality in this unit and the camaraderie that exists between all
30:28ranks, not just between the officers or the men, but across the whole battalion.
30:36Of course, Culver shouldn't have been taking these photographs at all,
30:39but the fact that he did that, and took so many photographs,
30:44and the fact that sometimes his commanding officer is quite a willing participant in these tableaux,
30:50meant that nobody was saying he couldn't do it.
30:52In fact, the contrary.
30:54I think he was encouraged to do it.
30:57Initially, there was an optimism to Harry Culver's photography,
31:00but as his war progressed, all that would change.
31:09In the German army, photography continued to be championed,
31:13and books of soldiers' photos were sold on the home front to an enthusiastic audience.
31:18And there was no shortage of new, would-be photographers to satisfy the demand.
31:23In 1915, 16-year-old Walter Kleinfeld arrived on the Western Front,
31:35as part of an artillery unit.
31:37And when his mother sent him a camera,
31:39he began taking the photographs that his son Volkmar recently found.
31:46His early images display an eye for subject and composition that belies his age.
31:53My father was full of ideals.
31:59And that is actually shown in his pictures,
32:03which are very idealistic and aesthetically beautiful,
32:07even if it's not about images of the war.
32:13I think that there were many fascinating impressions that he wanted to hold on to the film,
32:28which he wanted to hold on to the film.
32:32He photographed his comrades,
32:34how they are in the understands,
32:37or how they are in the gas mask.
32:41It was a great adventure for him as a 16-17-year-old.
32:49Like many soldiers' photographs,
32:54Kleinfeld's images show a fascination with friends,
32:57destruction, and the latest military equipment.
33:01But as his photography grew in confidence,
33:04he revealed an ability to look beyond the surface of the strange world around him.
33:11This is one of the most
33:12impressing photographs which are remaining from Walter Kleinfeld.
33:16It's a tree which is completely destroyed by guns.
33:22And this expressive style of documentation.
33:28It's like a dadaistic document.
33:32Why did he make this photograph, this motif?
33:37Perhaps he saw the symbol of this image.
33:43Because you see no dead soldiers on the picture.
33:48You only see violence.
33:52And this is the importance.
33:56This image was a sign that Walter Kleinfeld's photography was starting to change.
34:01By the autumn of 1915, Harry Culver's photographs had changed too.
34:16By then, promoted to captain, his battalion had spent weeks in trenches next to the Azaire Canal,
34:22one of the most dangerous positions on the Western Front,
34:25where they'd suffered terrible casualties.
34:27And the psychological effects were beginning to tell.
34:32Culver's pictures from this period look blurred and overexposed.
34:36And the change in the men who'd once posed happily for his photos is plain to see.
34:44Their uniforms seem to take on a different air.
34:47They start to wear scarves.
34:49They start to look a little bit more like brigands or pirates, if you like, in the trenches.
34:54Their mood seems to change visibly from shot to shot.
34:59There's a sense of that thousand-yard stare that there's almost a blankness somewhere behind the eyes,
35:05as they've seen.
35:07They're starting to see too much of this war.
35:09They're starting to see death.
35:11They're starting to see destruction.
35:12I don't think Culver's meaning to record this, but this is just a by-product of his cataloguing
35:22and recording the experiences of his men.
35:26And I often wonder whether that was having a telling effect,
35:29whether it was a condition of having a telling effect on Culver as well.
35:32Was he beginning to sense that?
35:35Is the experience of war starting to tell on the men,
35:39but is it starting to tell on Harry Culver too?
35:45On the 19th of December, 1915, 23-year-old Harry Culver was in the trenches
35:51when the Germans launched a deadly new weapon, phosgene gas.
35:55The shells land with a dull splash is what all the records say.
36:02And I think take some of the men unawares until the release of the gas.
36:06Men start coughing and spewing and clutching their throats again.
36:10And Culver is completely overcome by the phosgene gas.
36:15And he dies of the effects of the phosgene.
36:18And that, in effect, brings to the end this great album of his great adventure.
36:26Except for one final photograph, which, ironically, he never took.
36:31And he's on the other side of the camera, and that's the photograph of his grave.
36:41I really wanted this man to go on.
36:44I really wanted this man to come home.
36:45I'd seen it in his eyes. I'd seen the humour. I'd seen the pathos.
36:50I'd seen the care. I'd seen the humanity.
36:53But to see the finality of the grave,
36:58that really quite moved me.
37:02And the adventure had come to a tragic close.
37:15In the first world war, 1916 would prove to be a significant year for photography in the First World War.
37:22By then, the army had a new commander-in-chief, General Haig.
37:26A man who recognised the importance of front-line photographs,
37:30and who appointed Ernest Brooks as the army's first official photographer.
37:34In time, Brooks would capture some of the most iconic images of the war,
37:41like these dramatic silhouettes of soldiers on the skyline.
37:45But for him, the propaganda value of the image was key.
37:49And in contrast to many of the soldiers' own photos,
37:52the men he photographed were anonymous.
37:58Brooks' first main role was to photograph the build-up to the Battle of the Somme,
38:03the big push planned by Haig to break through the German lines.
38:09It would be the first real test for Britain's new volunteer army.
38:13Over a million patriotic recruits who'd enlisted at the beginning of the war.
38:20Many had been formed into the so-called PALS Battalions,
38:24fighting units made up of friends, neighbours and work colleagues,
38:27who'd joined up together at local recruiting stations around the country.
38:33Among them was William Smallcombe,
38:35a machine gunner in the 12th Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment,
38:39known as Bristol's Own Battalion.
38:43Against all the rules, William photographed his war,
38:47photographs which have now been passed down to his grandson, Michael.
38:52Today, Michael has come to the Somme to see historian Richard van Emden,
38:57who met and interviewed William in the 1990s.
39:01Well, I've brought along some photographs.
39:03I've always been aware we have these pictures that he took in the trenches.
39:08And I think you know a bit more about them, so perhaps, you know,
39:11if we can have a look. Yeah, yeah, of course, yeah.
39:13You could tell me something about them.
39:16Well, what I remember when I spoke to William, um, 20 years ago now,
39:20we sit on time, but he showed me these photographs and, um,
39:26I was taken with them immediately.
39:28These photographs are very rare because they're taken in 1916.
39:31So this is post-ban photography.
39:34But what's exceptional is the fact that William's a private.
39:37He's a private soldier with a camera.
39:39Now, I've spent a lot of time, I'm fascinated by the images
39:42taken by the soldiers in the Great World,
39:43and the vast majority are taken by officers.
39:46So to have a, you know, a private's photographs
39:50through the Battle of the Somme is exceptionally rare.
39:52I mean, really rare.
39:57Mostly taken before the battalion and scene action,
40:00there's an innocence and easy-going informality
40:02to many of William's photographs.
40:05But there are also clues within the images
40:08that hint at how surreptitiously they were obtained.
40:11And what's interesting about these photographs is you don't see officers.
40:17There are no officers in these pictures.
40:19They're all taken when he's on his own with his mates.
40:22Who are not going to give him away.
40:24People he can trust.
40:25Yeah.
40:26That's crucial.
40:26And you see that with other ranks photographs.
40:29They're almost invariably taken when you're in a trench,
40:33nobody's there, whip the camera out, quick photograph, done.
40:37The occasional blurred image might reveal the haste
40:40with which William took some of his photos.
40:43But he was always careful when obtaining new and illegal film.
40:49The story William told me is that when he wrote home to his fiancee,
40:55later my grandmother, he would ask for a piece of cake,
40:59which meant that he wanted her to send him a film.
41:02Right. Well, that's interesting in itself,
41:05because that suggests that must be pre-arranged.
41:08So when he goes to France at the end of 1950,
41:11he clearly knows there's a ban on cameras.
41:15You can't write home and say,
41:16my word for send me another film is his piece of cake.
41:19So that must, he must have known that and had that all set up.
41:22All the letters would have been read by censors.
41:24It would be a sample.
41:25So you would never know whether your letter would be read or not.
41:27So you couldn't take that chance.
41:29You couldn't have written home asking for that.
41:31Right. I see.
41:33Talking to my grandfather,
41:34he told me sort of what happened behind the trenches,
41:37but he never really talked about the battles, any action.
41:42And I know you know more about it.
41:44So do you have any facts you tell me?
41:46Yeah, well, I mean, he goes through the Battle of the Somme,
41:48and I'm not talking about going over the top once.
41:50He goes over more than that.
41:51And there is one photograph here that really stands out to me
41:55as being emblematic of what happened to the battalion.
41:59And this is this picture here.
42:01Yeah, right.
42:04And it's a picture taken of a grave.
42:07And I think that day changed William forever.
42:09Really? Yeah, really, really did.
42:16Just three miles from where William took that photograph,
42:19on the other side of the Somme battlefield,
42:21was German boy soldier, Walter Kleinfeld.
42:26Today, his son, Volkmar,
42:28is making his first trip to the Western Front,
42:31to see for himself some of the places where his father fought
42:34and took his photographs.
42:38I have read my father's books for a long time in the war.
42:45I have read his field post letters.
42:49And the area has become a little bit trusted.
42:55For seven days before the Battle of the Somme began,
43:13British artillery bombarded the German lines here,
43:17firing over a million and a half shells along a 16-mile front
43:20in an attempt to destroy the enemy defenses.
43:25Walter Kleinfeld had never experienced anything like it.
43:29And for a curious boy, it was an opportunity too good to miss.
43:33So in the heat of the bombardment, with his camera in hand,
43:38he peered out from a trench and by chance captured the exact moment
43:43a nearby church was hit.
43:47It's a photograph that has always intrigued his son, Volkmar.
43:50I tried to think about it, when he was photographed.
43:52I tried to think about it, when he was photographed.
43:54When he was photographed, he could imagine,
43:56when he was photographed.
43:58He could imagine, when the grenade is a grenade,
44:02there is a high level of lightning, there is a loud,
44:08there is a loud, there are a trumper.
44:10And of course, there is a church, there is a good house,
44:16and there is a grenade, it's really terrifying.
44:25The war was coming to Walter Kleinfeld.
44:30The same day he took this photograph,
44:32the first man in his unit was killed.
44:36He wouldn't be the last.
44:40Six days later, the Somme Offensive began,
44:44as British soldiers went over the top,
44:46believing that the German defenses had been destroyed in the bombardment.
44:52But they were still intact,
44:54and the advancing Tommies ran straight into a hail of machine gun bullets
44:59and artillery fire.
45:03Walter Kleinfeld and his artillery unit were in the thick of the action.
45:07They lost men and some guns,
45:09but by the end of the day had helped to repel the attack.
45:15Later, Kleinfeld even found time to take this photograph of his gun crew,
45:20and to write a postcard home to his mother.
45:22The card giving the merest hint of the ordeal he'd been through.
45:26The card that I had to do with her.
45:27The card was still working on him.
45:30I'm still Wells,
45:31but by the pressure and был a lot of pressure on the manter.
45:36I'm fully involved in the war,
45:39with the power that I am still in war.
45:40Now I can only say,
45:42that I was in the war.
45:43But Kleinfeld's apparent optimism would be short-lived, as the British offensive continued.
46:10Over the coming days and weeks, he began to lose more and more friends.
46:17And as the war dragged on, his changing state of mind was reflected in his photographs.
46:40His landscapes and portraits were replaced by stark photographs of the dead and dying,
46:49like this one he called, after the storm.
46:55It was rare for soldiers to photograph their dead countrymen.
46:58But Kleinfeld was making a point.
47:01And I think this is a very impressive picture, because there is no way to see any patriot or
47:12nationalistic aspect.
47:16All men are equal, and the death is, for all men, it's the same thing.
47:25For me, it's a kind of anti-war photography.
47:28Walter Kleinfeld wasn't the only soldier whose loss of innocence was captured in a photograph.
47:39Michael Smallcombe has come to the battlefields with historian Richard Van Emden to find out
47:45more about this photograph that his grandfather William took during the Battle of the Somme.
47:53It's a story that begins in this muddy field, above a feature known to the soldiers who fought
47:59here as Wedge Wood.
48:04We're here because on the 3rd of September, 1916, William went over the top in one of the
48:10sort of defining moments of his life.
48:12The Bristol Zone were up here, on the ridges here, just over here, in their trenches, and
48:16they were to come down straight across here and head towards Wedge Wood.
48:22As they come down this slope here, they're enfiladed by machine guns from the right here, from
48:27Germans up at the farm on the ridge, from over there, from the trenches over there.
48:31I mean, you can see how exposed, how exposed they are all the way down here.
48:35No, it's, I mean, it's quite shocking, really.
48:38Of course, we're here because of the significance of that one photograph, that picture of a grave.
48:44You know, it's terribly, terribly important to William.
48:47I'll show you pretty much where I believe it was taken.
48:53Against the odds, William made it across this field and into Wedge Wood, but nearly 400 of
49:01the Bristol pals had been killed or wounded in the attack.
49:05Many of those who died had no known grave.
49:10But thanks to William Smallcombe, one did, at least for a while, and it was somewhere in here.
49:19William was here, and this is where one of his really close friends, Ernest Fry, was killed,
49:26and where your grandfather buried him.
49:29And then he took out the camera and took this photograph of his grave.
49:33Right.
49:35And he felt that it was important to him, to, you know, in the middle of his battle,
49:40or shortly after, when he's still in grave danger, to take his camera out and take this photograph.
49:45And did he know Ernest Fry's family?
49:49Yes, he did, yes. In his service book, there is the full address, so he was in contact with their family.
49:54That this could have been a record for their benefit as much as his.
49:58I suspect, absolutely. This was, this was to show the family.
50:01To show the family that their son had had a decent burial.
50:07As the war continued, Ernest Fry's grave was lost.
50:12But William's photograph remains, as a permanent reminder of the sacrifice his battalion made that day.
50:20And the photograph is significant for another reason, too.
50:24From the pictures we have, this does seem that this is the last picture that your grandfather took,
50:31not only on the Somme, but during the Great War.
50:34So it seems he, by then, he'd just had enough.
50:38I think he'd had a belly full, yeah, absolutely.
50:40The fact that William didn't want to take any more photographs is not unusual,
50:46as the horrors of war began to wipe away the sense of adventure the soldiers once had.
50:53By the end of the Battle of the Somme, private photography is increasingly rare.
50:58You really get the impression that men no longer see this as the adventure that they had embarked upon.
51:04Now, I'm not saying these men were disillusioned, I'm not saying these men lack morale,
51:10but the last thing they wanted to do was to take photographs to remind themselves
51:15of the terrible images that they were witnessing every day.
51:24The following morning, Michael Smallcombe returned to Wedgewood,
51:29the place where his grandfather fought and would never talk about.
51:34William might have lost his love of photography here,
51:38but there was one image that Michael wanted to capture.
51:45The resonance that comes from knowing that my grandfather was here,
51:49a man I knew very well as he came here as a young man under fire,
51:55that his best friend was killed here, you know, it makes the place very special.
52:01And hopefully, even if the photograph doesn't show that,
52:07it will show it to me when I take it home.
52:09Almost a hundred years ago, William Smallcombe and Walter Kleinfeld were enemies who fought on these battlefields.
52:33Both volunteer soldiers and keen photographers,
52:37they had at times been less than two miles apart.
52:43Today, their ancestors are meeting up.
52:46It's really nice to meet you. I'm so pleased you're here.
52:50Shall we go inside?
52:53Michael and Volkmar want to compare the photos their forebears took.
52:57He's 17 years old.
53:0617 ...
53:08Yes.
53:10He's 17 years old, yes.
53:11He's 17 years old in a trench carrying a munitions basket.
53:26I don't know what it's called, a carrier, to say.
53:28Yes.
53:29I mean, this is... Here, this is my grandfather, my gross-vater,
53:33also in a trench...
53:35Mm-hm.
53:36..with his machine gun.
53:38And he's a bit older. He's 20, 22.
53:42But they're so similar,
53:45both without helmets, before helmets came in.
53:49Two young men sent to war.
53:52Well, they volunteered,
53:53but just standing in trenches the opposite sides of each other.
53:58Mike, here had my father...
54:01..three friends...
54:04Three friends of your father's.
54:06Ah, yeah.
54:07...photographiered.
54:09Yeah.
54:10Im SchĂĽtzengraben.
54:13Sie sehen alle ganz fröhlich.
54:16Sie lachen.
54:18Sie sind aber auch in einer tödlichen Gefahr.
54:21Yeah.
54:22Vielleicht wissen Sie das nicht.
54:24Hm.
54:25Well, it's so similar.
54:27You know, we both have your father's pictures
54:30and my grandfather's pictures of groups of friends.
54:33And his friends, all looking happy, relaxed.
54:39Mm-hm.
54:40Mm-hm.
54:41Probably before they'd had a chance to see the horror
54:45that they were going to go through.
54:47Yeah.
54:48But this sign is parallel.
54:49Very, very similar.
54:50Yes, yes.
54:51These people are enemies who are trying to kill each other, really.
54:57But, look, they're the same.
55:00It's just groups of friends.
55:02That's all they are, just young men.
55:04The similarities in the photographs taken by William and Welter are striking.
55:11And the parallels are seen in all photos taken by soldiers of both sides during the war.
55:17There's a preoccupation with friends and colleagues.
55:21An intimacy born out of camaraderie.
55:25There's a pride in the weapons of war.
55:28And a fascination with the often surreal landscape around them.
55:34And in William and Walter's case, both men photographed the tragedy, too.
55:41That is a very sad picture.
55:44It is a soldier under a rocifix.
55:48You can't recognize whether it's a German soldier, a French soldier or a English soldier.
55:56It's actually all right.
55:58It's a complaint against the war.
56:01And how unnecessary it is that a family is waiting for him to come from home.
56:09For a boy of 17 to take that picture, I think, is amazing, really.
56:13It's a very powerful image.
56:15And it's slightly similar to this, because we have here a crucifix.
56:20And this is the grave of my grandfathers best friend, who was killed and he buried him.
56:29Made this crucifix of shells.
56:34Having done that, he then took out his camera and took a picture of the grave.
56:41And these men of the past, they could be friends like us today.
56:50But they had to fight against each other.
56:55And they didn't know why.
56:58And they had to fight against each other.
57:01Walter Clinefelt died when Volkmar was still a boy.
57:04So he was never able to ask his father about the war or talk about their mutual love of photography.
57:10But finding the glass plates he left behind has helped to shed new light on the man he never really knew.
57:16to shed new light on the man he never really knew.
57:24Before making the journey home,
57:26there's one more place that Volkmar wants to visit,
57:29the largest German war cemetery on the Somme.
57:35It's a chance for him to reflect on his father's experiences
57:39and, of course, the extraordinary photographs he took during the war.
57:43A permanent reminder of what was supposed to be
57:48a young boy's great adventure.
58:13I hope, I hope that there's a warning.
58:20That something will never happen again.
58:22THE END
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