Saturday, June 27, 2009

World War I Army Signal Corps films

In 1918, the Army Signal Corps had some of the few-fangled "moving picture" cameras embedded at Chateau-Thierry and Belleau Wood. Now via the incredible Internet Moving Image Archive. Tanks, Artillery, Doughboys, german prisoners. Oh yeah, General Pershing, too.

It needs some sort of piano accompanyment to give it that old theater feel, but if this is your bag, baby, then you should take a look.

2 comments:

  1. The speed with which the gun crew could reload and fire the light field artillery was pretty impressive... and it's hard to beat footage of the first tanks used in battle. Pretty cool!

    If you like old footage like this, search for BFI films on Youtube. I've embedded a couple of their videos on my site over the past year or so. They have alot of stuff from the hand-crank camera days as early as 1900. Mostly street scenes in England.

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  2. What amazes me is how little seems to have changed since then. Young men still risking their lives to defeat an enemy. The amenities might be nicer now, but fighting in the field seems no less arduous.

    Thanks for sharing this BP.

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