Images of war : Flanders 1915 : rare photographs from wartime archives

By Christmas 1914 Britain's Regular Army had virtually ceased to exist. Four months of hard fighting had drained its manpower and the Territorial Army were called on to plug the gaps. The part-timers leapt at the chance to serve their country overseas and were soon on their way to the trenches and the harsh realities of war on the Western Front.Flanders 1915 tells the story, through rare and previously unpublished photographs and extended captions, of one of those eager Territorial battalions posted to Flanders during the first twelve months of WW1. It forms a unique and intimate record of the early years of war; many images captured on film by the private cameras of the battalion's junior officers, before official censorship was established. Above all it is a rare and outstanding portrait of the 'great adventure' of war in the days before Loos, the Somme and Passchendaele and the resulting lengthy casualty lists. By Christmas 1914 Britain's Regular Army had virtually ceased to exist. Four months of hard fighting had drained its manpower and the Territorial Force was called upon to plug the gaps before Kitchener's New Army was ready to take the field. The part-time, 'Saturday Night Soldiers', as they were disparagingly called, leapt at the chance to serve overseas.

Flanders 1915 tells the story, through many rare and previously unpublished photographs and extended captions, of one of those eager Territorial battalions - the 1/5 Battalion of the York and Lancaster Regiment. It forms a unique and intimate record of the early years of war, images captured on camera by Harry Colver from Ranmoor, Sheffield, one of the battalion's junior officers, before official censorship was introduced. From then on privately taken photographs of the war virtually disappeared. The Colver photographs present a rare and outstanding portrait of the 'great adventure' of war in the days before the Somme, Arras and Passchendaele and the resulting lengthy casualty lists.

Tells the story, through previously unpublished photographs and extended captions, of one of those eager Territorial battalions posted to Flanders during the first twelve months of WW1. This book is a portrait of the 'great adventure' of war in the days before Loos, the Somme and Passchendaele and the resulting lengthy casualty lists.