Hidden Histories: WW1's Forgotten Photographs

This is the extraordinary untold story

of soldiers' photography in the First World War.

These might look like professional photos,

but they were all taken by ordinary British and German soldiers

on personal cameras they took with them to war.

GUNFIRE

Today, much of our understanding of what the war looked like

comes from reconstructed battle scenes,

and iconic yet impersonal official photographs like this one.

But by exploring the personal photos

taken by the soldiers themselves,

many never seen before in public,

we'll present a new and unexpected picture

of the front-line experience.

This is World War I

viewed from the perspective of the men who fought in it.

Looking into the eyes of these men,

almost to see what they were thinking,

what's going to happen to them?

It's that connection with another human being

through the medium of that photograph

which is extremely important, in my view.

We'll find out how the effects of war were reflected

in the photos the soldiers took.

War is an adventure for a young boy,

but I think when he made

this picture,

he was no boy any more, he was a man.

And with no veterans alive to tell the tale,

we'll join the relatives of some of these men, as they go

in search of the stories hidden within their ancestors' photographs.

From the pictures we have,

it does seem that this is the last picture that your grandfather took,

not only on the Somme, but during the Great War.

Now we reveal, for the first time,

the secret history

of amateur photography

in the First World War,

and of the men behind the cameras.

The First World War was a bloody and brutal conflict,

but when it began, in August 1914,

it was, to many, a time of great excitement.

For the soldiers of Britain's regular army

and the tens of thousands of idealistic new recruits

who volunteered to fight,

war seemed like a great adventure.

A chance to join friends and colleagues

in a once-in-a-lifetime trip overseas,

to give the Germans a bloody nose

and to return victorious.

And as a wave of patriotism swept across the country,

many were determined to record their part in history in photographs,

both as a personal reminder and as a souvenir to show family

and friends when they returned.

Few were prepared for the horrors to come.

By the outbreak of war,

amateur photography was already a popular pastime in Britain.

The launch of the five-shilling Kodak Box Brownie in 1901

had made cameras affordable to the masses, so, by 1914,

many people were in the habit of preserving their memories

with an informal snapshot.

But it was the introduction

of a new and sophisticated folding model, in 1912,

that really paved the way for soldiers' photography

in the First World War.

Now, this little camera was one of the most popular cameras of the time.

Indeed it became so popular with soldiers

that it became known as "the Soldiers' Kodak".

It was called the Vest Pocket Kodak,

"vest" being the American name for waistcoat.

And it was designed to be small enough to slip into a waistcoat

pocket or, of course, the tunic pocket of your jacket.

When a soldier wanted to take a photograph,

this is what they would have to do.

Firstly, they would have to pull out the lens panel.

On the front, he has settings where

he can change the shutter speed

and the aperture depending

on how bright the day was.

You could either have one 50th

of a second for a bright sunny day,

or one 25th

if it was a bit more cloudy.

You would choose the setting and then you could change the aperture

from a distant landscape through to a portrait setting

and then take the photograph,

looking down into the viewfinder.

The Vest Pocket Kodak, known as the VPK,

wasn't the only folding camera available,

but it was the most popular.

Within a year, over 30,000 had been sold in Britain.

At 30 shillings apiece,

four times the weekly wage of an ordinary soldier,

it wasn't cheap, so most sales were made to officers

rather than privates.

Given the camera's popularity, it's a mystery that so little

is known about the photographs the soldiers took with them.

But in time, many of these men would want to forget

the horrors they'd seen.

So pictures and albums were shut away in cupboards and attics

and eventually forgotten.

One private soldier who did take a vest pocket camera to war

was William Smallcombe, who volunteered

for the 12th Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment in 1914.

The photographs he took have been handed down to his grandson, Michael,

himself a professional photographer.

This is a picture of my grandfather, which I took. He was about 90,

in his mid 90s, and he lived at our house.

William Albert Smallcombe looking very dapper there, I think.

William died in 1992,

and although Michael had seen his grandfather's photographs before,

he didn't know much about them,

because William rarely spoke about the war.

These are the small end prints...

..which, uh...come from the camera.

They're tiny, they're differently exposed, and...

actually, quite difficult to see what's in a lot of them.

This is William with his machine gun,

and I imagine, if you have a machine gun, you point it at people,

and some of them fall over,

so that's what he did and...but would never talk about.

You can see that what interested him were his friends,

but it's very poignant that you know that a lot of these people

who are with your grandfather who you knew...never came back.

I mean, I'd like to know more about these pictures

and where they were photographed.

Places have a spirit, I think, probably,

which comes from the experience of whatever happened there.

And I'd like to experience that, to find it.

Like many soldiers' photo collections,

the secrets to William's story may be hidden in the pictures he took.

So it's shocking to discover

that countless numbers of soldiers' photos have ended up as landfill,

thrown away, unwanted,

as the generation of veterans who took them began to pass away.

One man who salvaged some of it is ex-dustman Bob Smethurst,

who worked on the bins in Lindfield, in Sussex.

Six of Bob's ancestors died in the war,

so it's always been a subject close to his heart.

This is all the stuff, or some of the stuff,

I picked up over the years of being on the refuse.

And rescued, I suppose, in a sense.

From a military medal to photographs.

Some of my colleagues thought I was totally mad,

but I said that about a colleague who collected fishing tackle

and I thought HE was mad.

And this is just a part of the stuff that was thrown away

over the 36 years I was a refuse collector.

Bob began his World War I photo collection in the 1970s,

in the days before black plastic bin bags, when dustmen could see

the rubbish they tipped into the back of the dustcart.

In them days,

we used to carry the rubbish on our shoulders,

and therefore, when we emptied the bins,

you used to see the paperwork coming out

and the photographs, you know. You didn't find them all the time,

because, I mean, the only time you was aware of some,

it was when they started to be mashed up in the back.

Bob's most treasured find is a large collection of amateur photos

taken in 1914 by a soldier in the London Scottish Regiment.

Rare because they're the only known photographs of the battalion

before their first action, in October that year.

This is the sergeant, 14th London Scottish, who took the photographs.

And then there's a photograph here of German prisoners,

and you can actually see him, the shadow of him,

taking the photograph in the picture.

I mean, all I am is a custodian of this stuff

for future generations, because if we threw it all away,

this stuff perishes, and we'd be like the Romans,

you'd be digging it out in years' time, doing that.

I thought I'd save them the trouble of collecting it now.

Although many albums and photographs have been lost for ever,

there are families who cherish the images

taken by previous generations.

Fred Davidson was a 25-year-old doctor

in the 1st Battalion of the Cameronians

and amongst the first wave of soldiers to take a camera to war.

The albums he made were left to his grandson, Andrew,

and he's just spent a year painstakingly

researching his grandfather's story.

For me, this was a big personal project, because I had the albums,

but I knew nothing about the man - he died two days after I was born.

But what he kept were these three photo albums,

and I think they obviously meant a lot to him,

because they covered an extraordinary period of his life.

Fred set sail for France with Britain's regular army,

the British Expeditionary Force, on the 13th August 1914 -

just over a week after the war had begun.

The first photograph of my grandfather at war

is taken on the boat,

the SS Caledonian, that took them across from Southampton to Le Havre.

They look like they're three or four guys having fun,

one of them's dangling a camera,

and they're taking photos of each other,

in full knowledge that they are creating a pastiche

as if they're going on a cruise,

which is extraordinary to think of when we know what happened after.

The battalion arrived at the French port of Le Havre on the 15th August.

This photograph of their disembarkation was taken

by Fred's good friend,

machine-gun officer Robert Money.

Within days, the men of the British Expeditionary Force were

heading towards the Belgian town of Mons, in search of the German Army.

But by the 24th of the month, they were in full retreat,

overwhelmed by enemy forces.

Robert Money was one of the few British soldiers to take

photographs during this time.

There's a terrific photo

of the men resting

when they're being chased back by the Germans,

and they're all sprawled out on the grass

and you can see Robertson, the commanding officer,

sitting cross-legged,

cigarette in his mouth,

looking dazed, straight at the camera.

Beside him, his number two,

he's got binoculars pointing up at the sky.

They're looking at the German plane that follows them

every mile they march.

After a few weeks on the move,

the battalion entered hastily dug trenches,

initially here, near the tiny French village of La Bouteillerie,

close to the Belgian border.

And as the war settled into a deadly battle of attrition,

Fred and Robert Money began to document their experiences.

At that time, Secretary of State for War Lord Kitchener,

had banned the press from following the movements of the BEF,

so soldiers' photographs provide the only visual record

of the British front line during this period of the war.

There's a lot of mud, there's a lot of guns,

you're starting to feel that

there's real fighting going on,

not just a retreat.

Some of my favourite photos are the group shots,

where you can see my grandfather's assembled fellow officers,

almost like a football team.

And I think these are remarkable photos, because, by this stage,

although they're on the front line,

everyone is buying into the idea of a group photo.

They want to be seen together,

they want to remember each other,

they want THIS to remind them

of what they went through.

In those first few months of the war,

photographers like Fred Davidson and Robert Money were making up

the rules of war photography as they went along.

However, one enthusiastic soldier

drew up a set of simple guidelines,

later published in Amateur Photographer Magazine,

which suggested that a little common sense was all that was required.

There's an article written by "Medico",

somebody who'd been invalided back from the front.

And it's called "Photography At The Front,

"some practical notes by one who has been there."

Starts off here - "Don't flourish

"your camera in the faces of generals.

"Cameras are not popular at the front,

"and you might find yourself minus your camera.

"Don't use all your film on the voyage out!

"Save some of it for later -

"you might get better ones."

This temptation, it was so exciting that you would use

all your film before you even landed in France!

And lastly here,

"Don't take a photograph

"that could be of help to the enemy."

If you were captured, would you have photographs that could aid them?

Unfortunately, by the time the article was published

in March 1915, the rules had changed.

That's because some soldiers' photos

had begun to appear uncensored in the papers back home.

Like this one of Robert Money's which was

published in The War Illustrated in November 1914.

It's not known how much Robert Money was paid for the image,

but the market for soldiers' photographs

was beginning to open up.

And when the authorities found out, they acted immediately.

Now, Sir John French - the Commander-in-Chief -

knows that something has to be done, and on the 22nd December 1914,

he issues a General Routine Order, 464,

saying that photographs were no longer permitted.

Now, the problem with the GRO is that it's a local fix,

local to the Western Front.

No officer of rank about to embark for France

would have been aware of that ban.

But despite the ban, Fred Davidson and Robert Money,

photographed here together, continued to document their war.

It's about control.

That being in this war, especially after the retreat, there was

a feeling amongst a lot of the soldiers that they'd lost control.

That every decision is made for them by the army

and some of the decisions aren't very good. Even the officers felt that.

In taking photos,

they're almost reasserting their own control over certain things.

They're choosing what they remember, they're choosing to do something

that the army doesn't want them to do and they don't care.

In Germany, the high command took a different view of photography.

When war was declared,

Kaiser Wilhelm immediately appointed 19 court photographers

to document what was expected of them to be a swift and decisive victory.

And for even the lowliest private soldier,

recording the war through photographs was regarded

not only as an enjoyable pastime but also a patriotic duty.

If you get into the whole story of amateur photography

from World War I, you get astonished about

the gigantic amount of pictures which were produced.

Photography for soldiers was not forbidden.

It was not forbidden. You had to ask their next lieutenant

or something like if they were allowed to take pictures.

But I think, if you think about the order in these changes, nobody asked

these questions, because everybody was interested in photographs.

Within weeks of arriving at the front,

many soldiers wrote home, asking for a camera to be sent out.

Such was the demand for cameras that nationwide schemes were set up

by photography enthusiasts to ensure there were enough available.

One of these actions

we know is from the German Photography Society.

They asked their members to take cameras which were lying around

at home and send them to soldiers for recording this world history.

One of those who would write home for his camera was

Walter Kleinfeldt, a boy soldier with a keen interest in photography.

Like his father, Volkmar Kleinfeldt has been taking photos

since he was a boy.

And for over 40 years has run this photography shop in the German town

of Tuebingen, a business first set up by his father in the late 1920s.

Volkmar doesn't remember much about his dad,

because he died when he was still a child.

For many years, this home movie footage

of them together in the 1930s

was, along with his father's old war diaries, the only reminder.

The photographs Walter took during the war were thought to have

been lost, but then just three years ago, Volkmar found a box containing

over 120 glass plates stored in his father's archives.

This is the first time the images have been seen in public.

Volkmar showed the images to photography historian

Dr Ulrich Haegele.

And I saw it immediately, that these pictures are very special.

Really special and really extraordinary.

Walter Kleinfeldt was 16, 17 years,

but he has a view of photographer, of an old photographer,

of a reporting photographer.

I think perhaps it was the easiest way for him to record the war.

And for him and for his family, that they know at home what war is.

Meanwhile, back in the British lines, it had been just three days

since the ban on photography was introduced when an extraordinary

event occurred which would seriously undermine the military authorities.

On Christmas Day 1914, along much of the 30-mile front line

south of Ypres, there was an unofficial truce

as friend and foe put down their rifles,

climbed out of their trenches, and met in no-man's-land.

And over the next few hours,

Tommy and Jerry shook hands, exchanged gifts

and significantly photographed the event.

In fact, if it weren't for the soldiers' photographs,

no visual record of the Christmas truce would exist today.

Letters and diaries tell us the extraordinary events of that day,

but it's the actual photographs that prove that

that fraternisation took place.

Images of British officers and other ranks intermingling happily

with the enemy are some of the most extraordinary documents of our time.

Would the Christmas truce be remembered today

were it not for those photographs? I doubt it.

On the 8th January 1915, photos of the event made the front pages.

It was the last thing the authorities wanted.

These pictures caused a sensation in the British press.

The government knew it was vital to keep the public full square

behind the war effort.

All of a sudden, people were going to look at these photographs and think

these people are not really any different from us,

except for the colour of their uniform.

But the images of the Christmas truce only fuelled

the demand for soldiers' photos.

And soon, British newspapers, which were read at the front,

started to run competitions,

offering vast sums of money for the best photographs.

There was a fear that soldiers would take their eye off the ball.

That they would load, aim and shoot their cameras

as opposed to their revolvers and rifles.

So it was critical that the government stood on what was

effectively a press frenzy at that time.

And on the 16th March 1915, they introduced a War Office instruction

that banned cameras completely.

You would not be allowed to take photographs,

you would not be allowed to take a camera overseas,

you would not be allowed to have contact with the press.

It finished photography, in their minds, at that point.

Anyone caught breaking the rules faced court martial,

as some discovered to their cost.

One individual private, Ernest Mullett of the Gloucester Regiment,

was caught with a camera in November 1915.

He was given three months' imprisonment with hard labour.

Whether Fred Davidson would have obeyed the new ban is unknown,

because on the 13th March, three days before it was introduced,

he was shot in no-man's-land

as he went over the top to help a wounded colleague.

Although he was badly injured,

Fred survived and was sent home to England to recover.

From his hospital bed in Folkestone,

he took perhaps his most important photograph of the war.

When he wakes up, he takes a photograph. The first photograph

he takes when he recovers is of a beautiful nurse sitting

at the end of the bed, reading a magazine, with a pot of daffodils,

and the sun streaming in.

It's so different to what he's been photographing and where he's been.

And you really feel that difference. And that's my favourite photo,

because that nurse turned out to be my grandmother.

They ended up having a love affair and later married.

So for my family, that is a photo that means everything

and is really why we're here.

Meanwhile, on the Western Front,

the new ban on photography was being taken seriously

and soldiers with cameras were hastily sending them home.

22-year-old Robin Gybbon-Monypenny was a second lieutenant

in the Essex Regiment and had taken his camera to war.

When the ban was introduced,

he wrote home urgently to his Aunt Ethel,

who he lived with in England.

Today, his daughter, Sheila, still has his letters.

There is a letter here dated March 26th 1915,

it is from my father to his...

"My Dear Aunt Ethel,

"many thanks so much for your letters

"and for the parcel of food and the underclothes,

"both of which I found on my arrival in Billets this time.

"By the by, I am sending my camera home, as a strict order

"has just been issued that no officers can have them.

"Any we've got, we must send home. Let me know when you get it."

And she did get it, because, basically,

we still have that camera here.

The camera that my father actually took to France.

And this is the camera.

The VPK. It was called VPK, wasn't it?

I remember that name. It looks to be quite a heavy one.

It opens out. Ah, that's right, that looks familiar.

It's really lovely to have it still.

After all these years, it's still with us.

The negatives that Robin Gybbon-Monypenny took

with his vest pocket camera have only recently been discovered

by the family, left undeveloped in an envelope.

When they were processed, this is what they revealed.

Sheila doesn't know why her father didn't want to see

his photographs, but to her, they're a fascinating insight into his war.

It was extremely interesting to see them -

it made it all become even more vivid and alive.

To actually see the photographs taken on the spot.

They're a remarkable record of his time in the war.

In the spring of 1915, many territorial battalions

were preparing to leave Britain for the Western Front.

These part-time volunteer soldiers were needed urgently

to bolster the heavily depleted Expeditionary Force.

And despite the risk of court martial,

some men still took cameras with them.

Among them was Harry Colver,

a second lieutenant in the 1st/5th Battalion

of the York and Lancashire Regiment.

This is him. Caught on camera shortly before leaving for France.

Historian Jon Cooksey has spent years researching

the story behind his photographs.

What we have here is a record of the experiences

of a unit, a territorial unit in the First World War,

and of one man's desire to capture every single second of that.

The battalion arrived in France on the 14th April

and was dispatched to trenches near the village of Fleurbaix.

Once there, Harry Colver began to document their daily life

in a collection of both informal and artistically posed photographs.

Photos of such clarity and invention, they rank

amongst some of the best soldiers' pictures of the war.

He's obviously got an eye for composition.

He arranges them in quite purposely into various poses

and he fills the frame with these men.

He doesn't just want to record

what they're doing - he wants to record it in an artistic fashion,

and I think that comes through very strongly on many of the photographs.

Culver photographed all ranks,

from the private soldiers who reported to him,

to his fellow junior officers.

He even photographed his commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Fox

sitting him alongside the privates,

revealing the informality that often existed

amongst these part-time volunteer soldiers,

something that was rarely seen in the regular army.

So it actually shows almost the equality in this unit,

and the camaraderie that exists between all ranks,

not just between the officers or the men, but across the whole battalion.

Of course, Colver shouldn't have been taking these photographs at all.

But the fact that he did that and took so many photographs,

and the fact that sometimes his commanding officer

is quite a willing participant in this tableau,

meant that nobody was saying he couldn't do it.

In fact, the contrary. I think he was encouraged to do it.

Initially, there was an optimism to Harry Colver's photography,

but as his war progressed, all that would change.

In the German army, photography continued

to be championed, and books of soldiers' photos

were sold on the home front to an enthusiastic audience.

And there was no shortage of new would-be photographers

to satisfy the demand.

In 1915, 16-year-old Walter Kleinfeldt

arrived on the Western Front as part of an artillery unit.

And when his mother sent him a camera,

he began taking the photographs that his son Volkmar recently found.

His early images display an eye for subject and composition

that belies his age.

Like many soldiers' photographs,

Kleinfeldt's images show a fascination with friends,

destruction and the latest military equipment.

But as his photography grew in confidence, he revealed

an ability to look beyond the surface

of the strange world around him.

This is one of the most impressive photographs

which are remaining from Walter Kleinfeldt.

It's a tree which is completely destroyed by guns.

And this expressive style of documentation,

it's like Dadaistic document.

Why did he make this photograph? This motif?

Perhaps he saw the symbol of this image,

because you see no dead soldiers on the picture, you only see violence.

And this is the importance.

This image was a sign that Walter Kleinfeldt's photography

was starting to change.

By the autumn of 1915,

Harry Colver's photographs had changed too.

By then, promoted to captain,

his battalion had spent weeks in trenches

next to the Yser Canal, one of the most dangerous positions

on the Western Front, where they'd suffered terrible casualties.

And the psychological effects were beginning to tell.

Colver's pictures from this period look blurred and overexposed,

and the change in the men who'd once posed happily for his photos

is plain to see.

Their uniform seemed to take on a different air,

they start to wear scarves, they start to look a little bit

more like brigands or pirates, if you like, in the trenches.

Their mood seems to change visibly from shot to shot.

There's a sense of that thousand-yard-stare,

that there's almost a blankness somewhere behind the eyes

as they've seen, starting to see, too much of this war.

They're starting to see death, they're starting to see destruction.

I don't think Colver's meaning to record this,

but this is just a by-product of his cataloguing

and recording the experiences of his men.

And I often wonder whether that was having a telling...effect,

was the condition having a telling effect on Colver as well?

Was he beginning to sense that?

Is the experience of war starting to tell on the men,

but is it starting to tell on Harry Colver too?

On the 19th December 1915, 23-year-old Harry Colver

was in the trenches when the Germans launched a deadly new weapon - phosgene gas.

The shells land with a dull splash, is what all the records say,

and I think take some of the men unawares,

until the release of the gas.

Men start coughing and spewing and clutching their throats again,

and Colver is completely overcome by the phosgene gas.

And he dies of the effects of the phosgene.

And that, in effect, brings to the end this great album

of his great adventure.

Except for one final photograph, which, ironically, he never took.

And he's on the other side of the camera.

And that's the photograph of his grave.

I really wanted this man to go on.

I really wanted this man to come home.

I'd seen it in his eyes, I'd seen the humour,

I'd seen the pathos, I'd seen the care, I'd seen the humanity,

but to see the finality of the grave...

..that really quite moved me.

And the adventure had come to a tragic close.

1916 would prove to be a significant year for photography

in the First World War.

By then, the army had a new Commander-in-Chief - General Haig -

a man who recognised the importance of front-line photographs

and who appointed Ernest Brooks

as the army's first official photographer.

In time, Brooks would capture some of

the most iconic images of the war,

like these dramatic silhouettes of soldiers on the skyline.

But for him, the propaganda value of the image was key, and in contrast

to many of the soldiers' own photos,

the men he photographed were anonymous.

Brooks' first main role was to photograph the build-up

to the Battle of the Somme - the big push planned

by Haig to break through the German lines.

EXPLOSION

It would be the first real test for Britain's new volunteer army,

over a million patriotic recruits

who'd enlisted at the beginning of the war.

Many had been formed into the so-called Pals battalions,

fighting units made up of friends, neighbours and work colleagues,

who joined up together at local recruiting stations

around the country.

Among them was William Smallcombe, a machine gunner

in the 12th Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment.

Known as Bristol's Own Battalion.

Against all the rules, William photographed his war, photographs

which have now been passed down to his grandson, Michael.

Today, Michael has come to the Somme to see historian

Richard van Emden, who met and interviewed William

in the 1990s.

Well, I've brought along some photographs.

I've always been aware we have these pictures

that he took in the trenches.

I think you know a bit more about them so perhaps, if we had a look...

-Of course, yeah.

-You could tell me something about them.

What I remember, when I spoke to William 20 years ago now,

such a long time, but he showed me these photographs,

and I was taken with them immediately.

These photographs are very rare, because they're taken in 1916.

So this is post-ban photography.

But what's exceptional is the fact that William's a private,

he's a private soldier with a camera.

Now, I've spent a lot of time,

I'm fascinated by the images taken by the soldiers in the Great War,

and the vast majority are taken by officers.

So to have a private's photographs of the Battle of the Somme

is exceptionally rare. I mean, really rare.

Mostly taken before the battalion had seen action,

there's an innocence, an easy-going informality

to many of William's photographs.

But there are also clues within the images that hint

at how surreptitiously they were obtained.

And what's interesting about these photographs is

you don't see officers.

There are no officers in these pictures.

They're all taken when he's on his own with his mates.

-Who are not going to give him away.

-People he can trust, that's crucial.

And you see that with other ranks' photographs -

they're almost invariably taken when you're in a trench,

nobody's there, whip your camera out, quick photograph, done.

The occasional blurred image might reveal the haste with which

William took some of his photos.

But he was always careful when obtaining new and illegal film.

The story William told me is that

when he wrote home to his fiancee, later my grandmother,

he would ask for a piece of cake.

Which meant that he wanted her to send him a film.

Right, well, that's interesting in itself, because that suggests,

in a way, that must be pre-arranged.

So when he goes to France at the end of 1915,

he clearly knows there's a ban on cameras.

You can't write home and say,

"My word for 'send me another film' is 'piece of cake',"

so he must have known that and had that all set up.

All the letters would have been read by censors?

It would be a sample, so you would never know

whether your letter would be read or not.

You couldn't take that chance,

-you couldn't have written home asking for that.

-Right, I see.

Talking to my grandfather, he told me

what happened behind the trenches,

but he never really talked about the battles, any action.

And I know you know more about it, so perhaps you can tell me.

Well, he goes through the Battle of the Somme. And I'm not talking

about going over the top once - he goes over more than that.

There is one photograph here that really stands out to me

as being emblematic of what happened to the battalion.

-And this is this picture here.

-Oh, right.

And it's a picture taken of a grave,

-and I think that day changed William for ever, really.

-Really?

Really did.

Just three miles from where William took that photograph,

on the other side of the Somme battlefield,

was German boy-soldier Walter Kleinfeldt.

Today, his son Volkmar is making his first trip to the Western Front,

to see for himself some of the places where his father fought

and took his photographs.

For seven days before the Battle of the Somme began,

British artillery bombarded the German lines here,

firing over a million-and-a-half shells along a 16-mile front

in an attempt to destroy the enemy defences.

Walter Kleinfeldt had never experienced anything like it,

and for a curious boy, it was an opportunity too good to miss.

So in the heat of the bombardment, with his camera in hand,

he peered out from a trench

and by chance captured the exact moment

a nearby church was hit.

It's a photograph that has always intrigued his son, Volkmar.

The war was coming to Walter Kleinfeldt.

The same day he took this photograph,

the first man in his unit was killed.

He wouldn't be the last.

Six days later, the Somme offensive began

as British soldiers went over the top,

believing that the German defences had been destroyed

in the bombardment, but they were still intact.

And the advancing Tommies went

straight into a hail of machine-gun bullets and artillery fire.

Walter Kleinfeldt and his artillery unit

were in the thick of the action.

They lost men and some guns

but, by the end of the day, had helped to repel the attack.

Later, Kleinfeldt even found time

to take this photograph of his gun crew,

and to write a postcard home to his mother,

the card giving the merest hint of the ordeal he'd been through.

TRANSLATION FROM GERMAN:

But Kleinfeldt's apparent optimism would be short-lived,

as the British offensive continued.

Over the coming days and weeks, he began to lose more and more friends.

And, as the war dragged on,

his changing state of mind was reflected in his photographs.

TRANSLATION FROM GERMAN:

His landscapes and portraits

were replaced by stark photographs of the dead and dying,

like this one he called After The Storm.

It was rare for soldiers to photograph their dead countrymen,

but Kleinfeldt was making a point.

And I think this is the impressive...

a very impressive picture, because it is...

There is no way to see any patriots

or nationalistic or so aspect.

All men are equal,

er, and the death is for all men, it's the same thing.

For me, it's a kind of anti-war photography.

Walter Kleinfeldt wasn't the only soldier

whose loss of innocence was captured in a photograph.

Michael Smallcombe has come to the battlefields

with historian Richard van Emden to find out more about this photograph

that his grandfather, William, took during the Battle of the Somme.

It's a story that begins in this muddy field,

above a feature known to the soldiers who fought here

as Wedge Wood.

We're here because, on the 3rd of September 1916,

William went over the top in one of the defining moments of his life.

The Bristol's Own were up here on the ridges here,

just over here, in their trenches,

and they were to come down straight across here

and head towards Wedge Wood.

As they come down this slope here,

they're enfiladed by machine guns from the right here,

from Germans up at the farm on the ridge,

from over there, from the trenches over there.

I mean, you can see how exposed...

how exposed they are, all the way down here.

No, I mean, it's quite shocking, really.

Of course, we're here because of the significance

of that one photograph, that picture of the grave.

You know, it's terribly, terribly important to William.

I'll show you pretty much where I believe it was taken.

Against the odds, William made it across this field

and into Wedge Wood.

But nearly 400 of the Bristol Pals

had been killed or wounded in the attack.

Many of those who died had no known grave,

but, thanks to William Smallcombe, one did.

At least for a while.

And it was somewhere...

in here.

William was here and this is where

one of his really close friends, Ernest Fry, was killed.

And where your grandfather buried him.

And then took out the camera and took this photograph of his grave.

Right.

And he felt that it was important to him,

in the middle of this battle, or shortly after,

when he's still in grave danger,

to take his camera out and take this photograph.

And did he know Ernest Fry's family?

Yes, he did, yes.

In his service book, there is the full address,

so he was in contact with their family.

So this could have been a record for their benefit as much as his?

I suspect, absolutely, this was to show the family.

-To show the family that their son had had a decent burial.

-Yeah.

As the war continued, Ernest Fry's grave was lost.

But William's photograph remains as a permanent reminder

of the sacrifice his battalion made that day.

And the photograph is significant for another reason, too.

From the pictures we have,

this does seem that this is the last picture that your grandfather took,

not only on the Somme but during the Great War.

So it seems he... By then, he'd just had enough.

I think he'd had a bellyful, yeah. Absolutely.

The fact that William didn't want to take any more photographs

is not unusual,

as the horrors of war began to wipe away

the sense of adventure the soldiers once had.

By the end of the Battle of the Somme,

private photography is increasingly rare.

You really get the impression

that men no longer see this as the adventure they had embarked upon.

Now, I'm not saying these men were disillusioned,

I'm not saying these men lacked morale,

but the last thing they wanted to do was to take photographs

to remind themselves of the terrible images

that they were witnessing every day.

The following morning, Michael Smallcombe returned to Wedge Wood,

the place where his grandfather fought and would never talk about.

William might have lost his love of photography here,

but there was one image that Michael wanted to capture.

The resonance that comes from knowing

that my grandfather was here -

a man I knew very well -

as he came here as a young man under fire,

that his best friend was killed here,

you know, it makes the place very special.

And, hopefully, even if the photograph doesn't show that,

it will show it to me when I take it home.

CAMERA CLICKS

Almost 100 years ago, William Smallcombe

and Walter Kleinfeldt were enemies who fought on these battlefields.

Both volunteer soldiers and keen photographers,

they had, at times, been less than two miles apart.

Today, their ancestors are meeting up.

It's really nice to meet you, I'm so pleased you're here.

-Ja.

-Shall we go inside?

Michael and Volkmar want to compare the photos their forebears took.

TRANSLATION:

-Siebzehn...?

-Il a dix-sept ans.

-Ah.

-Oui?

-17 years old, yes.

By Pozieres, yeah.

He's just 17, in a trench, carrying ammunitions...basket,

I don't know what it's called, a carrier.

I mean, this is...

-Here, this is my grandfather, mein Grossvater.

-Mm-hm.

Also in a trench with his machine gun.

And he's a bit older - he's 20, 22.

But they're so similar, both without helmets, before helmets came in.

Two young men sent to war.

Well, they volunteered,

but just standing in trenches the opposite sides of each other.

-Three friends.

-Three friends of your father's. Ah, yeah.

Well, it's so similar, you know.

We both have your father's pictures and my grandfather's pictures

of groups of friends, and here's his friends,

-all looking happy, relaxed, um...

-Mm-hm.

Probably before...

they'd had a chance to see the horror

that they were going to go through.

Very similar, yes.

These people are enemies who are trying to kill each other, really,

but...they're the same.

It's just groups of friends, that's all they are, just young men.

The similarities in the photographs

taken by William and Walter are striking,

and the parallels are seen in all photos taken by soldiers

of both sides during the war.

There's a preoccupation with friends and colleagues,

an intimacy born out of camaraderie.

There's a pride in the weapons of war,

and a fascination with the often surreal landscape around them.

And in William and Walter's case,

both men photographed the tragedy too.

For a boy of 17 to take that picture,

I think it's amazing, really.

It's a very, very powerful image

and it's sort of slightly similar to this,

because we have here a crucifix,

and this is the grave

of my grandfather's best friend,

who was killed and he buried him...

-made this crucifix of shells.

-Mm-hm.

Having done that, he then took out his camera

and took a picture of the grave.

Walter Kleinfeldt died when Volkmar was still a boy,

so he was never able to ask his father about the war

or talk about their mutual love of photography.

But finding the glass plates he left behind

has helped to shed new light on the man he never really knew.

Before making the journey home,

there's one more place that Volkmar wants to visit.

The largest German war cemetery on the Somme.

It's a chance for him to reflect on his father's experiences

and, of course, the extraordinary photographs he took during the war.

A permanent reminder of what was supposed to be

a young boy's great adventure.