Battlefield Footage: What the Archives Reveal? (No AI)

Added: 2026-05-08

[00:00:01]So clearly a trench raid has gone on here. The idea of bringing back some intelligence, disrupting the en enemy and getting some living intelligence in the form of prisoners. So we can see German prisoners including this guy in the middle of the screen right now wearing a a star helm, the German steel helmet being brought back in uh having been captured by South African troops. It was still got bayonets fixed actually just here.

[00:00:27]Hi guys, I'm Dan Hill, a military historian specializing in the history of the First World War. In this video, we're going to return to the archives to explore more raw, unedited battlefield footage from the war on the Western Front. So, let's get straight into it.

[00:00:41]So, here we are back in the fantastic US National Archives, albeit looking at a British film, raw and uncut from the Battle of Aras in 1917, or we should say the buildup and preparation to the Battle of Aras in 1917, which is a real combined effort between ultimately the British and Canadians, but South African and Australian involvement as well, and also a much larger French contingent, which was going to attack a week after this battle kicks off.

[00:01:09]And you can see the weather's actually not too bad at this time of year, which is uh somewhat surprising because ARS itself in April is going to be launched in a snowstorm.

[00:01:20]Got mules very common out on the Western Front uh and in other theaters as well along with horses being uh brought up the line here. Classic artillery with their ready rounds in the background. We can see this uh I don't know if that's a mule or a horse, but we can see it bringing up probably water and uh thirsty crews getting a a drop of water in the classic British petrol tins, which whether had water in or not, troops would always say still tasted like petrol because at some point they would have had that in it.

[00:01:54]Artillery air bursts firing. You can actually see those firing um and exploding midair here. They would have been timed by a particular style of fuse to allow them to go off midair.

[00:02:08]British trench mortars. This is a great almost frontline shot. And you can see because the guy actually taking this footage is clearly in a trench and he's only just dipped his camera above the top of the trench probably because he's not far from the enemy. So you can see the sandbags there. You can also see a large amount of barbed wire directly out in front with the famous corkcrew or silent pickets out in between kind of keeping that wire up. And in the distance presumably it's a little bit of a bleached out shot, but you can see trench mortars landing and uh landing roughly on the German position which clearly can't be that far away.

[00:02:49]men of the Leia regiment, Tigers or the North Thumberland fuseliers coming up the line here. Uh you can usually tell the difference based and probably we can't manage it here but shoulder titles which are worn by certain troops and we can see just about see the the um shoulder title position where they would be up there and little bits give you a clue about what kind of soldier you're looking at here. We've clearly got a Scotsman or possibly Tinesside Scots a part of the Northland fuselers based on the the bonnet that he's wearing there and uh we see that with a few of these troops. So either Scottish or Tyiders and uh gun battery moving up in the background, cavalry around really high traffic, high volume areas.

[00:03:35]Just here right in the middle gives you an idea of the dangers of the Western Front at the time. See this big pile of stuff? These are all British 2-in toffee apple trench mortars. So, massive chunk of explosive in that kind of ball on the end of them. They're nicknamed a toffee apple because they quite literally look like a toffee apple. Uh sometimes they're called the plum pudding. And uh these are live trench mortar rounds with hundreds of men walking around them. If that pile was to take a hit, there'd be an absolutely devastating explosion.

[00:04:09]Plenty of supplies as well. other things. Just so much traffic moving up and down.

[00:04:16]Troops going up towards the front line.

[00:04:18]A big variation in heights. It looks actually like this is a medical detachment from In fact, no it doesn't.

[00:04:23]It looks like these are divisional flashes. So individual divisions and brigades would have markings at this point to identify them. We could probably work out exactly who that is.

[00:04:39]Cavalry also waiting for an opportunity to exploit any success on the battlefield. These guys could be really useful. Cavalry get such a bad rep on the on the Western Front as being pointless and and useless. Well, in static trench warfare, yeah, I mean, there's a lot to say about that. They could absolutely be uh be pretty limited. But once the battlefield opens up, and it does early in the war and it does late in the war as well. In fact, from March 1918, there's a lot of movement on the Western Front. Cavalry really comes into its own again. The speed on the battlefield is extremely useful.

[00:05:09]Talking about speed or lack of it, this is a a British tank, heavy tank dropping down a roadway embankment with a load of fuel cans. Well, a few less now. Fuel cans on the top. This is a female tank.

[00:05:22]You can tell by the guns on the side in the sponsson there. Female tanks were machine gun armed only.

[00:05:31]And then part of the famous guards division marching up the line here.

[00:05:35]Welsh guards and Cold Stream guards was a larger minimum height requirement for the guards in the First World War.

[00:05:42]They tended to march and parade with a little more snap as it was referred to.

[00:05:47]Uh had really good reputation on the battlefield. We've got the battalion band here. These guys would probably double as stretcher bears when in action. Obviously wouldn't go into action with their with their instruments. They' pick up stretchers and they would support the battalion that we can see marching through here.

[00:06:07]So this group just coming up here possibly a platoon strength. Got an officer at the front, senior NCO. In fact, this is certainly a company at least. Platoon's about 30 to 50 men and a company close to 200.

[00:06:24]Battalion padre or brigade chaplain possibly here addressing troops just prior to going over the top. and some kind of uh religious service going on with the officers out front and the troops behind suggests this is just prior to going into action.

[00:06:46]So clearly the wind's picked up as you can see from that guy there.

[00:06:54]the uh guards uniform. Actually, you can pick out guards when you're looking at shots like this because they've got this multiple rows of buttons. I think it's three or four buttons in sequence that go down the front of the tunic. And uh they're distinct from other branches or other regiments within the British Army.

[00:07:10]So, you can usually pick guards officers uniforms out.

[00:07:17]The famous Australians fantastic fighting reputation.

[00:07:21]um regarded amongst the best the finest troops on the Western Front and uh good fighting reputation outside of the line as well, but you know they were a little rough around the edges. But when the fight when there was a real fight going on, the Australians, the Canadians and the New Zealanders are the guys you want to call on.

[00:07:40]Possibly pioneers here under the command of a sergeant preparing scaling ladders to literally get out of the trenches.

[00:07:47]Let's just pause on that for a second.

[00:07:48]It's a good point to make because trenches in the First World War are extremely tall. Generally speaking, I mean, work that one out. That's got to be at least 7 ft tall. So, they're designed to offer protection and they have a fire step built into them. But in order to the downside is in order to get out of the damn things, you you've got to build some pretty serious ladders in order to help people get out. And that's what we see going on right here. So, preparations for attack with probably pioneers uh possibly even royal engineers um creating and then securing ladders into the side of the trench, both sides, which is a little unusual.

[00:08:36]Very chalky trenches at this point. Aras very well known for that.

[00:08:46]Cleverly concealed artillery pieces dug into what looks like the wall of a shadow or something like that. And uh very difficult to spot by enemy counter battery fire or even enemy observers.

[00:09:02]This is very likely a legitimate frontline battlefield shot here. Just pausing that for a second. Again, we see this same kind of profile very low down.

[00:09:11]Sometimes the the framing is not so great. Sometimes this kind of footage is a bit on the shaky side and you can see the troops in the distance running. And that's not a particularly common thing, particularly when you're covering very long distances over very difficult terrain. Running is really reserved for when you're directly under fire. And we clearly see that happening here with men quite well spaced out. So very likely uh directly under enemy fire at this point.

[00:09:58]see the odd shell explosion in the background there as well.

[00:10:10]Obviously, these guys have to negotiate their own barbed wire at the same time as getting through the enemy positions, and any kind of bottleneck can prove deadly. Any point where men have got a bunch together, there's a high chance there's an enemy machine gun pointing at that spot.

[00:10:26]So, clearly a trench raid has gone on here. the idea of bringing back some intelligence, disrupting the en enemy, and getting some living intelligence in the form of prisoners. So, we can see German prisoners, including this guy in the middle of the screen right now wearing a a Starhelm, the German steel helmet, being brought back in uh having been captured by South African troops. It was still got bayonets fixed actually just here.

[00:11:02]Coming right down the trench towards the cameraman. This is a German soldier in the foreground. Another German soldier beyond Kings Liverpool's now attacking Kings Liverpool's light infantry. that shot card said the the kind of um uh if you like the title card there isn't to the best of my knowledge a Kings Liverpool's light infantry. There is a Kings Liverpool regiment but they're not light infantry.

[00:11:34]So these guys going over the top potentially into a just up into a support line. But you can also see huge numbers of troops in the background here. So this is a a very big advance going on and you can see men negotiating lanes in their own barb wire. That's why they're advancing in lanes at this point rather than the kind of traditional over-the-top wave attack. You got to get through your own wire first. So we're seeing men it's a little unusual. You look at this and you think this surely this isn't an over-the-top moment. Very well could be possibly behind the lines but not that far. You know this is a good part of the way that men advance.

[00:12:14]So just a really busy battlefield. A good example of of just how busy battlefields can be. Men negotiating their own barb wire, trying to pick a path through. Normally this would get taped out prior to the attack. So engineers, possibly even scouts would go out and tape these positions so that advancing troops know how to pick their own way through their wire before they then spread out into a wider formation to advance across no man's land. But men attacking with bayets, men with bayonets fixed here suggest they're certainly going into an attack.

[00:12:47]Bomb supplies being issued. Bombs a little bit of a misnomer today. Um what we'll be saying really is grenades. The the Mills bomb is the famous grenade of the time, but they're really referred in the First World War referred to as a bomb.

[00:13:01]And these are packs of about 20 that get handed out.

[00:13:09]City of London's attacking uh at a walking pace. You can see in the background right off in the distance there, troops attacking. This idea of walking towards machine guns is a is an old and well-known story. It's really it's it's a lot more logical than it sounds. If you imagine you got to advance over 5, 600 yards of very open, very ruted, difficult ground uh before you even get anywhere near the enemy.

[00:13:33]Doing that at a run is extremely tiring and particularly if you've got a protective bombardment going down, you simply don't want to run into your own your own barrage. It's going to cause huge amounts of damage. So, walking towards machine guns, at least for a time, obviously when under direct fire, walking is not something that you want to do and not really something that was done. It does have its logical kind of way of considering. Whilst we're going through this, if like us, you find the First World War endlessly fascinating and want to explore more free content just like this, why not check out our podcast, Not So Quiet on the Western Front, where each week, alongside my co-host, Dr. Spencer Jones, we tackle everything from famous battles and kit to weapons that changed the war. It's available wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:14:19]Real three of the sequence starts with 6-in Mark 7 guns, long barrel, very long range. These things can fire 6 to 8 miles. It's a it's a long old distance and deliver a really heavy punch at the end of it as well.

[00:14:37]See the shells stacked up ready to be fired in case they need to be fired at very high rate of fire which is sustainable for short periods of time but extremely tiring for the crews.

[00:14:48]And we can see the effect. This is clearly a battlefield shot. It's worth pointing out actually. You can see a general clue as to whether something is legitimate or staged can be found in the height at which the cameraman has placed his camera on a tripod. This is only just above the ground and so suggests that it's quite close to the front lines.

[00:15:10]So delivering an artillery barrage to protect advancing troops would today would call this a rolling or creeping barrage. The general idea is that these shells explode say 50 to 70 yards directly ahead of the advancing infantry and continue to extend as the infantry push forward. This is part of the story actually behind the idea of troops walking into action, which sounds crazy and particularly stupid when you think about it, but if you're advancing behind a set and timed barrage, it makes a lot more sense.

[00:15:43]So, we can see troops advancing here now. um potentially just behind their own front lines but making their way forwards. Uh it's also possible that we can see some it's difficult to tell but like white smoke in the distance seems to suggest artillery dropping British shells down in that direction.

[00:16:10]Kind of ad hoc shell carriers here. 290 lb shell. You certainly don't want to be carrying them very often. So, we got this wheeled device that is uh clearly a pretty smart invention. And I guess so many men out on the battlefields for such long periods of time, they're going to come up with smart ideas like this.

[00:16:27]Delivering the shells, at which point they're getting cleaned off. Really important that the shells clean when it goes into the barrel. Stops the possibility of any issues in firing, including ones that could harm or kill the crew quite easily. So, you see that going on just there.

[00:16:43]troops being told to man their guns coming out of a a dugout. Those dugout entrances, by the way, they're always dug towards the enemy. The one thing you don't want, of course, is an enemy shell dropping directly down one. So, they're dug towards the enemy.

[00:16:57]No fuses on the top of the vast majority of these shells here. So they'll be fitted at the very last moment um and then set with either a contact impact fuse uh sometimes called the graze fuse uh by this point in the war or a timed fuse for an air burst which has got a set of dials that you can set the time that it's going to go off. Breach getting closed raised. This would all be commanded by uh a single battery commander who would be hopefully have a ford observation officer with a spotter given the the details.

[00:17:31]Interesting aircraft here. So, we've got a Lewis gun on the front. Twoman aircraft. This is unusual. This is a somebody can perhaps tell me possibly an FE2 or uh even an Airode DH2, but it's a pusher. And these are really go out of favor by about 1917. But instead of the traditional pull aircraft which has a propeller on the front and drags the air through that way, this is a pusher. the the engine is at the back and the uh they get pushed along instead of pulled.

[00:18:00]So, it does give a few advantages particularly when you can't shoot through a propeller before the inter invention of the interrupter gear. means you can fire forwards without your propeller getting in the way, but they're not quite as efficient, not quite as powerful as a a more traditional front facing or frontended aircraft.

[00:18:23]Overflying German rear areas by the looks of things.

[00:18:35]Bit hard to tell for me exactly what's going on here, but um presumably according to the note on the shot card, some trench lines down below.

[00:18:47]Mobile anti-aircraft gun probably firing fairly light shells, maybe maybe 13 pounder um with an air burst fuse.

[00:18:59]This is a pretty new problem actually in the First World War. There isn't really much aircraft before the First World War and therefore there's not much need for an anti-aircraft gun. So, a lot of these get repurposed into that kind of role.

[00:19:09]We can see what looks like air bursts up in the sky there.

[00:19:13]Very high rate of fire.

[00:19:25]Heavy gun battery here.

[00:19:28]Interesting to see marks on the barrel here. If we can just about work. It looks to me like that says RGA, which would be Royal Garrison Artillery, opposed to the Royal Field Artillery or even the Royal Horse Artillery. The RGA tend to fire the big heavy guns. And uh this would be an example of that. A big howitzer. It's been hidden quite cleverly into a barn to avoid things like counter battery fire, being spotted by enemy observers or aircraft. So lots of this kind of stuff happens.

[00:19:57]Center figure is a major. Only 21 years old. That's incredible. This guy right here, you know, to have that kind of responsibility at 21 is is pretty shocking to think of today, but at the time, bear in mind, 21 year olds have already seen a lot of life at that time.

[00:20:11]It's a it's a very different world to what we uh what we consider today.

[00:20:16]So, more 6-in howitzers this time firing in battery. So, four of them here with their crews uh working pretty hard to keep that rate of fire up and the river scarps are around our ass here. All kinds of this is a great example of the kind of traffic you see moving about. That light rail that we see going past there in in the background may well contain spoil from tunneling. So chalk that has to be taken away from the front line areas to avoid revealing the fact that there's been um digging and tunneling going on underground of which there was a lot around the uh battle of Aras. We've got barges as well here. These are going to be bringing up individual shells, 18 pounders by the looks of things, these guys with them on their shoulders.

[00:21:01]But also you get wounded move back and forward. Barges are great for that because rivers are fairly still and if you've got wounded that are going to get jolted around on rickety old roads that can cause a lot of further problems and and barges are really useful for transporting wounded British tanks here. This is a male variant uh mark difficult to tell. I'm not so great on the marks. could be a MarkV tank by the time we get to April of 1917 with a those male six pounder naval guns on the side and the the trail on the back for extra traction.

[00:21:35]Again, probably doing top speed 3 4 mph.

[00:21:40]Another good shot here. This guy at the front there was just holding what looked like an SOS rocket. So, these will be a a kind of quick signal that you could send back to the artillery if you're under attack. And these are clearly Scottish troops um based on the Kilts and Highland troops for that matter as well. Land troops quite often wore trousers and putties.

[00:22:16]He's got British Lance Corporal here on his possibly his BSA motorcycle and uh whether he's delivering a message to that officer there. It's difficult to tell. And then you've got side carts with a with machine gun attachment as well, which is an unusual thing. Didn't see a huge amount of service out on the battlefield itself. Quite often a lines of communication work. A lot of these guys are much like the cavalry are in place in case of not break in but break through. If the British army or Canadians or the New Zealanders or even Australians were able to get through the lines and out into open country beyond that's when these kind of things would really come into their own when the the ground started to get better but in a kind of classic trench warfare position very difficult to use.

[00:23:04]More artillery firing here. 18 pounders and then pioneer troops. These are something in between an infantry battalion and a group of engineers.

[00:23:16]They're uh quite often used. A typical British division at this time would have been 12 infantry battalions plus one pioneer battalion who would be used for trench construction, helping out with mining and various other things. So kind of little more labor focused.

[00:23:36]These lads having a laugh at the sight of a camera, which was a real novelty back then, seeing a camera. People will wave wave for home. They understand this might well end up in a in a cinema with family at home having a look. So, lots of light-hearted moments, which is unusual to consider when you you think that a lot of these guys are going up towards the front lines and very soon into battle. Just pause here for a second as well. Big height difference between a number of these people. So the average British soldier in the first world war is 5'5 in tall. The average Canadian is about 5'7. The average American is about 5'7 as is the Australian. And a lot of this comes down to the kind of impact of late Victorian period and industrial revolution. Cities are just polluted unhealthy places to live. So a lot of city lads tend to be smaller than those from the countries and particularly those from places like Australia and Canada where they're just brought up in a healthier environment.

[00:24:30]And we see a big variation in height here. Minimum height would have been 5 foot2. So, you know, could be really quite small.

[00:24:40]And then cavalry waiting usually quite a way behind the lines. Waiting for an opportunity ideally to advance into the attack. They were by this point in the war carrying rifles as well as uh on occasion lances. There we go. That's the end of this reel which looks at the battle of Aras in 1917. Some fascinating stuff. Hope you found it interesting.