" 'Twas messy, that bit of a fight" - Dead Germans amidst wire entanglements

" 'Twas messy, that bit of a fight" - Dead Germans amidst wire entanglements

Dead Germans amidst wire entanglements

V18906

The painstaking care of the Germans is evidenced in this stone and steel defense which they erected to ward off the attacks of the Allies. Those horizontal lines on the sides of the wall are the marks of the boards with which the Germans built the mould before pouring in the concrete around the girders and beams of steel which were added to give the redoubt extra strength. Farther along where a huge shell has broken away the wall you can see the ends of the beams projecting. These fortified places were sometimes defended with machine guns, the muzzles sticking out through tiny openings on the side where the Allies would be forced to attack. At other times they were used as a trench defense, offering much greater difficulties to the attackers than an ordinary trench. Just behind that post you can see one of the defenders, fallen forward on his face with his arm over his head as though he tried to ward off the missile that killed him. Near him is another tangled in the strands of barbed wire that literally covered every foot of ground near the defense positions of both the Allies and the Germans. Silhouetted against the sky you can see what at first glance would seem like tall reeds. It is more of the steel reinforcements that the Germans put into the walls and arches of this position in order that it might better withstand the bombardment which they knew would come.

1 stereograph : b&w

1 gelatine silver print stereograph (8 x 15 cm) mounted on card (9 x 18 cm)

Copyright. The Keystone View Company

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World War through the stereoscope