Anzac Day 2021: Colourised WWI images give new perspective of our heroes
The colourisation of these incredible WWI images drives home the truth that these brave soldiers were people just like us. See the images here.
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Novelist L.P. Hartley once wrote: “The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.”
It’s easy, when scrolling through grainy, black and white images of World War I, to fall into this thinking. To imagine that these young men and women were somehow different to us.
The facts are, though, that these people were our grandfathers and great-grandfathers, our grandmothers and great-grandmothers.
They had the same hopes, dreams and priorities as us — peace, prosperity, a safe home and a healthy family.
It is also easy to imagine that these men and women were somehow extraordinary, imbued with a special courage. The truth is they were ordinary people called upon to do an extraordinary thing. To make extraordinary sacrifices.
The colourisation of these incredible archival photographs of Australians in World War I helps
to drive home this truth, to bring these scenes closer to the present day. It helps us connect.
Look at the faces of the men — boys, really — of the 7th Field Battery, Australian Artillery, as they take time out from the fighting at Lone Pine, Gallipoli. Clearly relaxed — or as relaxed as anyone can be in a war zone — the men share tobacco and a newspaper and you can almost hear them chatting about the girls they left behind in Australia. It could be smoko on a worksite.
Then there are the men of 3rd Field Ambulance, clowning around before embarkation. This obviously close-knit bunch could never have prepared themselves for the horrors they would witness. Perhaps they had an inkling. Perhaps that’s why they’re embracing a light moment while they can.
One of those in the photograph, Private John Simpson Kirkpatrick, would become a folk hero for his incredible courage under fire, rescuing wounded soldiers from the Gallipoli battlefield with his trusty donkeys. Simpson died under machinegun fire on May 19, 1915.
Who knows how many of the wounded soldiers in the Heliopolis Hotel, converted to a war hospital, made it home to loved ones. Who can say whether any of those young men charging towards Turkish trenches, bayonets fixed to the end of their rifles, ever set foot back in Australia.
Then there is the image of the young nurses on the island Lemnos who saved so many lives that would have otherwise ended there on the other side of the world. There are many Australians alive today thanks to the selfless efforts of these amazing women in saving the lives of their forefathers. World War I was the first major conflict in which candid photography was commonplace and the visual record that survives to this day is more accessible than ever thanks to digitisation. Using state-of-the-art technology and image editing software, IBM artificial intelligence (AI) practitioner Adam Makarucha has brought the past back to life to celebrate our war heroes in colour.
“I use an artificial intelligence model that is hosted on IBM Hybrid Cloud and has trained on thousands of images to determine the appropriate colour, reduce noise and make the images clearer,” Mr Makarucha said.
“The technology can distinguish between blue sky and green grass. We can also influence the AI model to ensure it gets the correct colour, for example the uniform of the soldiers.”