pretty cool video using real footage...   get to see some interesting hardware I never knew existed.


http://www.warhistoryonline.com/show-reviews/the-battle-of-the-somme-1916-original-footage.html

Sweet... I'll check this out when I get home.  Thanks

WW1 had some really outrageously odd gear, and the Somme was sort of a nadir for that stuff.  A lot of people got some reality knocked into their ideas on the first of July, 1916.

That is an amazing video for the time.  I am surprised that it would be shown in British theaters, with depictions of casualties, while the battle was still going on.

From the website:

"Premiered in London on 10 August 1916 and released generally on 21 August, while the battle continued in France, the film gave a very graphic depiction of trench warfare, showing dead and wounded British and German soldiers. The film was a massive success, selling some twenty million tickets in its first six weeks of release in Britain and going on to be distributed in eighteen other countries."

I happened to pause it at 25:52. It's a shot of a foxhole lined with sandbags. When it runs, you see a white flash in the lower left corner. I stopped it at the right frame and I could see what the flash was. It looks like a person that somebody tried to scratch out of the print. You can see his head and the marks from whatever was used to alter the negative. Given that it's old film, and not professionally edited, it may have been a mistake that they forgot to edit out and someone tried to fix it the final print. It looks like they wanted to show the landscape and there was a soldier in the way during part of the shot.

IMO, the editor tried to cut out the part with the soldier in it, but missed a couple of frames.

WWI bump.