New images of Aussie diggers’ WW1 plight on show in London

A CENTURY since the start of the Great War, astonishing new images have emerged of Australian Diggers in action on the Western Front.

100 years on: WWI in close-up

A SERIES of photographs depicting Australian Diggers on the Western Front are to go on public display, some for the first time since they were taken almost 100 years ago.

The images, including several taken unofficially by the soldiers themselves while in the trenches, were unearthed in files of negatives stored in a large repository outside of London where they had remained unseen for decades.

But from today they will be shown at the prestigious Imperial War Museum (IWM) in central London as part of its eagerly anticipated reopening following a AU$37 million makeover to its World War I halls.

Candid ... the photographs depict some lighter moments of life on the Western Front.

Some of the images taken by government appointed Australian and British war correspondents have also been digitised to be more widely available.

One image has a digger with a German soldier’s Pickelhaube helmet apparently bartering with a French soldier for a sale while another shows a solemn impromptu battlefield funeral. Others are more candid shots depicting the slog in mud and blood-filled trenches.

IWM First World War gallery lead curator Paul Cornish said the astonishing images and detailed captions were an integral part of the exhibition, which opens in London today, to give the narrative to other static displays.

In the trenches ... the images reveal the conditions of fighting on the Western Front, 100 years ago. This image shows two men of the 7th Australian Light Trench Mortar Battery operating a light trench mortar established in a machine gun post on the new front line, east of Villers-Bretonneux.

Those static displays include makeshifts trench signs Australian soldiers made on the Western Front, uniforms and battlefield artefacts such as a German pistol seized by a Queenslander after a charge.

“Australians feature prominently in the display,” Mr Cornish said.

“Many of the images were taken about 1916 and are central to the museum as really representative of the First World War. No war had until that point been so thoroughly covered … it really gives an idea of what the fighting looked like.”

Scenes of destruction ... soldiers on the march, captured in a new series of images at the Imperial War Museum in London.

Mr Cornish said many images struck the right note between propaganda and actual news coverage. Some had to be smuggled out by soldiers and sent to wives who on-sold them to newspapers. The exhibition includes correspondence between the wives and newspapers they were selling the images to.

He said they had been seen before at the Imperial War Museum and also the Australian War Memorial in Canberra but many others had only been kept as negatives or stored as old photographs.

Originally published as New images of Aussie diggers’ WW1 plight on show in London