Posted on 03/03/2005 2:25:44 PM PST by Jinjelsnaps
Very tiny people then.
Amazing - its hard to imagine reality wasn't black & white back then. These bring the period to life. Thanks
Thank you. Memories of an innocent world, long gone. Something within me wished while I was looking at the pitucres that they had left it there. Progress is all that grand.
Does anyone know how many American veterans of WWI are still living? Unfortunately, it must be less than 100 at this point.
Thanks and the quality is better then I expected.
Those are some amazingly beautiful photographs. Thanks for the post!
Not to kill a joke, but...
The French fought bravely in WWI. They didn't surrender, nor appease or even collaborate with their enemy in WWI.
Of course, given the weapons and leadership their military brass gave them, and the proximity of the front lines to Paris, they had little choice.
You may now resume making French jokes.
Thanks, great photos!
Very impressive. Thanks for posting.
What has happened to France?
Really.
Back when those photos were taken, the French were tough bastards. And you can tell too.
And religious.
Note the priests (in uniform!) and the nuns.
That was during a terrible war, but those people look defiant, not defeated. Not at all.
That was 90 years ago, two generations. My grandfather fought in World War I.
Look at how far France has fallen!
Look at how quickly moral rot from within completely unhinged a great nation.
I tell you, those men in those photos kicked the German's asses. They were outnumbered but they fought and won. They were as fine as any troops in the world.
They do not look different from Americans, really, except for the officers photo, where they look like they're ready to mount horses for a cavalry charge.
How the mighty are fallen, in such a short time.
But WHY?
What made France fall from those guys in those photos that you would want on your side, and that nobody wanted to mess with, to the weak and feeble state that France is today?
Moral decay.
Rot from within.
The worm in the wood.
It makes you weep.
And when you see it in color, it looks more real, and close to us. What separated the poilus of my grandfather's generation from the effeminate France of today?
The loss of standards. Moral fatigue and collapse.
It happened there.
It wants to happen here.
No one is immune.
Wonderful. Thanks PE.
Boys at their game of skittle. The one in the middle looks an acolyte.
Picture made on the Place d'Erlon in the city of Reims, 1917.
The French actually fought that one very hard. Those were not the French of 1940, or today.
Very cool. I agree with other Freepers who are surprised at the high quality of these photos.
There was also a Russian color process at the same time. It took three exposures -- Red, Green and Blue -- separately and then the three colors were combined to make a color image. IT was very ungainly, unlike the Lumière process.
The images were odd, since the three exposures were taken separately anything that moved would be in one color.
Here's a link to the russian process.
http://www.utoronto.ca/tolstoy/colorportrait.htm
Kind of brings the whole thing to life 90 years on.
See my post #37...
You are correct in weapons and leadership given them. Didn't take long for us to replace the Chau Chat machine gun issued our troops with the reliable BAR, did it?
They lost more men proportionately than anyone else in WWI, and kept at it.
Yes, they did.
They lost about what the Russians did, proportionally, in World War II.
Ils ne paseront pas!
And they did not pass.
But look how far, how fast a great nation can fall due to nothing more than the change of mind of some people.
Ozymandius.
See my #37 and #57... Third person to come after me for a joke. Sheesh, some need to lighten up just a bit. If I had meant something seriously I would have cranked out a paragraph or two.
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