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The horror of the war as you’ve never seen it before: Reproduced in breathtaking colour, dramatic photographs from WW1 that show the carnage… and courage. See also this link for other colourised pics.
We’re used to seeing pictures of the First World War in faded brown sepia – dull, muddy, black-and-white photographs that seem to epitomise the drab khaki landscape of shell-blasted sludge that was the trenches in which they were taken.
But, 100 years on, the wonders of 21st-century technology now allow us to see these amazing pictures of the conflict in breathtaking full colour, giving us a much keener sense of what it was actually like to be there.
British photo technician Frank Augrandjean travelled back in time to colour this selection of images from the Imperial War Museum’s archive – specially selected to bring home the full horror of the conflict – exclusively for Weekend magazine.
Bloodbath and mudbath Seven stretcher bearers struggle to carry a wounded man to safety in Flanders during the battle of Passchendaele in 1917. Prolonged shelling destroyed drainage ditches and turned the area around the shattered town of Ypres into a quicksand of impassable sucking mud that would bog down wounded men and drown them
Pigeon post: Pigeons were often used to carry messages from the front line when radio, Morse code and human runners had failed. Here an officer (far right) writes a message as the pigeon’s handler, having removed the bird from its cage, holds it upside down to attach the note.
Giddy up: Dismounted cavalrymen take a rest in a convenient shellhole while their mounts form a protective ring around them. Horses proved ineffective in trench warfare, and by the war’s end they had effectively been replaced by tanks
Highway to hell: Soldiers gingerly make their way across a path made of wooden duckboards in Chateau Wood near Ypres, Flanders, during the battle of Passchendaele in 1917. Shelling has reduced the wood’s trees to gaunt skeletons
Sleeping it off: Tommies snatch a few minutes’ shuteye during a well-deserved break from front-line duty, watched by men waiting to take their place. Soldiers could spend days in the forward trenches with barely a wink of sleep
Up and at ’em! British soldiers go into action, but the man in the foreground has fallen before even leaving the trench. Note the reinforced concrete bunkers in the background which have already suffered heavy artillery pounding
Iron monsters: Developed in secret by the Admiralty under Winston Churchill, tanks, or ‘landships’ as they were originally known, first saw action on the Somme in September 1916. This one, named Iron Duke, is clanking through the city of Arras to spearhead the British offensive there in April 1917. They were hellishly hot for their crews and liable to break down, but tanks helped end the deadlock of the trenches in 1918
Survivors: Soldiers of the original British Expeditionary Force return from the bloody battle of Loos in September 1915. Loos was the last in a series of failed British attacks that effectively destroyed the BEF and led to the firing of its commander, Sir John French, and the hiring of his successor, Sir Douglas Haig, who kept the job for the rest of the war despite being accused of senselessly sending millions of men to their deaths
Doomed? One of the most iconic images of the war shows soldiers of the Royal Irish Rifles waiting to join the offensive on the Somme on 1 July, 1916. There were 60,000 British casualties that day – almost 20,000 died. The battle continued until mid-November, but no other day produced such appalling losses
Entente Cordiale: A Tommy befriends two French children in June 1916. Such images of the Franco-British alliance in action were useful propaganda but belied often edgy relations between soldiers and local civilians, who were accused of overcharging their defenders. The soldier belongs to the 15th Battalion, the London Regiment (Civil Service Rifles), a unit raised from civil servant volunteers in the capital
Horsebox to hell: British troops pose in a railway carriage en route to the front in 1916. A sign on the sliding door on the right proclaims ‘Hommes’ and ‘Chevaux’: the men often had to share their transport with horses
Before disaster struck: Women workers stack live shells destined for the trenches at the huge munitions factory at Chilwell in Nottinghamshire in 1917. A few months later, on 1 July, 1918, 250 workers were killed when eight tons of TNT explosive at the factory blew up. Only 32 bodies could be positively identified
A soldier and horse wear gas masks at the Canadian Army Veterinary Corps Headquarters.
Indian infantry wearing gas masks in a trench, 1915, prepared for a gas attack.
A mobile pigeon loft, enabling messages to be sent from the Front Line back to headquarters. The BBC reports that 100,000 carrier pigeons were used as messengers throughout the First World War, and records show they delivered 95% of their messages correctly.
A group of soldiers advance from a trench, over a protective sandbag wall (circa 1915).
German Field Artillery Regiment crew, with a 7.7 cm Feldkanone 96 field gun, 1914.
